


Flicker

by Cinderstrato



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Exile, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Politics 'n Shit, Post-Civil War, Psychological Trauma, The Cap Squad Has Another Horrible Adventure, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-05-16 12:50:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 52,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5829580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinderstrato/pseuds/Cinderstrato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes knows how to live off the grid. For someone who’s spent a solid half-century being a shadow, it’s almost too easy. Unfortunately, he’s on the run with a man who's never turned tail before in the course of his entire stubborn life. </p><p>The war’s over, and they’ve all lost.</p><p> </p><p>Post-<span><em>Civil War</em></span> speculation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm 98% certain that all of this is going to immediately be Jossed by CA:CW, but what the hell.

* * *

 

_August 2016_

* * *

 

* * *

 

Alaska is fuckin’ cold.

 

“It’s fuckin’ cold,” Barnes observes, voice muffled by his scarf. The green yarn is scratchy and coarse, and it smells like patchouli. It wasn’t worth stealing. It’s too late to give it back, though -- they’ve left the bus behind them, and they’re already eight miles out of Skagway proper.

 

Rogers doesn’t reply. He’s following along gamely enough, puffing into his own kerchief, his steps measured and deliberate. Rogers didn’t say much in the bus either. Or on the ferry. He didn’t even notice that Barnes had taken that punk-ass kid’s scarf. Barnes doesn’t ask if Rogers is okay -- neither of them are, is the thing -- but he picks up the pace as they trudge up the hill to their safehouse. The sooner Rogers gets inside, the better. Barnes can feel the joints of his arm getting stiff too, the thick, ropey scar tissue around his shoulder aching at every chilly point of contact.

 

The safehouse isn’t anything special. It’s one of Romanoff’s, and it looks as though it hasn’t been used in a solid decade. The walls of the two-story cabin are covered in crawling green moss with only the glint of grimy windows to pull focus away from the surrounding thick brush and snow-capped evergreens. The cabin has a shed, an enormous generator, a porch that’s been collecting snowdrifts, an empty bird-feeder, and an outhouse.  

 

There’s a half-buried statue of a grinning gnome on the porch.

 

“Christ,” Barnes says.

 

He hears Rogers huff quietly behind him; he glances over his shoulder and sees a small curl of a smile above Rogers’s popped collar. “You picked the place, Buck. You want to go to Tahiti instead, it’s fine by me.”

 

“‘S fine.” He mounts the rickety porch stairs, testing their give, and then combs through the carpet of moss for the door. God, it’s _cold_. The wind is cutting through his heavy coat, and behind him, Rogers is breathing a lot harder than he probably should be. Barnes’s fingers close around the door handle, finally; it turns with a loud, rusty shriek, and then pops right off in his hand.

 

He punches the door down.

 

There’s a brief silence. Dust swirls as the musty air drifts out and the snow blows in, and Barnes feels a roil of sudden, hot shame low in his stomach. Rogers doesn’t say anything. He just steps around Barnes and goes inside, and as soon as Barnes follows, tail tucked between his legs, Rogers starts to heft up the fallen door.

 

“Lemme do that,” Barnes says quickly, taking the reinforced plank right out of Rogers’s hands and fitting it back into place. Rogers looks irritated, but he rummages around in the kitchen drawers until he finds a roll of duct tape, and they tape the door hinges up as best they can.

 

Their best isn’t great; the wind is still howling through the gap under the door. Rogers finds a ratty carpet and tucks it up against the uneven floorboards. It helps, a little, and he lights a fire in the potbellied stove in the corner. It smokes something awful -- probably a clump of pine needles jammed in the chimney -- but eventually it clears up and starts to warm the main floor.

 

Rogers explores the cabin while Barnes plants his frozen ass by the stove, soaking in all the heat he can. There’s nothing to see on this floor, after all. It’s a standard foxhole: old furniture, a few dusty knick-knacks, and cabinets stocked with everything from tinned beans to suture kits to batteries. Overhead, Rogers’s footsteps are steady but slow. He’s getting tired. He gets tired so easily now.

 

Once back downstairs, Rogers takes a moment to set up their emergency reception device, hiding it in a cupboard, behind the beans. He then takes out one of the cheap dump-phones they’d packed and turns it on.  “I need to let Sam know we made it okay,” he says. “He’ll let the others know.”

 

Barnes would be far more comfortable if _no one_ knew, but it’s not worth another fight. Rogers has been adamant about not vanishing on his friends, and if someone has to know where they are, Barnes would rather it be Wilson. He watches silently while Rogers sends the text and then crushes the phone in his fist before putting the handful of metallic dust neatly in the trashcan.

 

They unpack a little and remove the worst of the dirt and grime with sanitary wipes. When Rogers finally sits down, gray-faced and wan even in the dim light, Barnes retrieves the package of sandwiches he’d squirreled away. The glass panel is missing from the coffee table in front of the sofa, so he balances the bag on the edge of the frame, within Rogers’s reach.

 

Rogers stirs a little. “Where’d you get those?”

 

“Skagway. I paid for them this time,” Barnes tells him. “Eat.”

 

He puts his coat back on and wanders upstairs. The heat hasn’t reached the small bedroom yet, and the two cots inside are like blocks of ice. Neither one of them will be sleeping up here tonight. He chooses the cot closest to the wall for himself and puts Rogers’s suitcase on the other one. He finds several serviceable quilts in a chest and sets them by the stairs to take down before scouring every inch of the attic, opening drawers and shaking out the bedding. His mattress smells like something died on it.

 

From what he knows of Romanoff, something probably did.

 

He finds wire-taps and security devices, maps and files and an ancient cellular phone. There’s a stash of expired prescription medication in the ceiling, and an impressive array of poison-vials in the lining of Rogers’s mattress. He tests the support beams and cracks open the single window to peer up on the roof. Gradually he unearths a respectable collection of weapons: six knives, two garrotes, seven handguns of varying calibers, a broken taser, and a decent sniper rifle.

 

Satisfied, he gathers up his prizes and returns downstairs.

 

Rogers has eaten three and a half sandwiches and fallen asleep between one bite and the next on the lopsided sofa, his socked feet poking out from under a blanket. Barnes takes the rest of the sandwiches over to his warm corner in the kitchen; he consumes them efficiently while he inspects their new cache of weapons and listens to Rogers sleep.

 

One of the handguns is badly damaged enough to be unusable, but he cleans up the others as best he can. Weapons secure, he fixes up a nest by the door, his favorite pistol within easy reach and a knife tucked up in his boot, and lays down. He’s tired -- the last month has been marked by near-continuous running and combat, and his still-healing body isn’t at optimum performance yet. He and Rogers are both vulnerable, and that thought is enough to keep him alert despite the exhaustion.

 

There’s no noise from outside. No cars, no passing pedestrians, no television sets or distant airplanes. The cabin’s so utterly silent that Barnes can hear the unnatural, mechanical _swish-click_ coming from Rogers’s chest. It’s disquieting.

 

He moves the pistol a little closer, and eventually, he sleeps.

 

**************

 

He wakes to the smell of burnt oatmeal.

 

His hand tightens reflexively on the pistol at his side, but he curbs the impulse and listens for a moment, tracking the steps of the person moving around the kitchen. The stride is long and light -- it’s Rogers, and there’s no one else in the cabin.

 

Barnes slackens his grip on the gun and sits up.

 

“Morning, Buck,” Rogers says. He’s standing at the stove, stirring a pot on the range and frowning down at it.  

 

“Morning,” he says, out of rote habit. How many mornings is it now that he’s gotten up to the sight of Rogers moving around their current hideaway, murmuring to Wilson on the phone or burning breakfast? Too many to still be surprised by it, anyway. “No breaches?”

 

“No sign of anyone. Not even a coyote.” Rogers abandons the pot and unearths two ceramic bowls from a high cupboard; it takes a little more time to hunt down the accompanying spoons. “I did a perimeter sweep when I went out to visit the biff.”

 

It takes Barnes a moment to recollect the shabby little outhouse in the trees. “Is it functional?”

 

Rogers grimaces. “Don’t ask.” He dishes out a generous heap of oatmeal and hands the bowl to Barnes. “I’ll clean the whole thing out this afternoon.”

 

Barnes doesn’t argue with him. He has a vague but persistent impression of having once had to stake out a target from a sewer, and he has no desire to revisit that particular memory.

 

Rogers serves himself and sits on the floor to eat, only wincing a little as he draws up his knees. After a hesitation, Barnes follows suit. His instincts rail at him to conduct his own perimeter check. Rogers is clever, but he’s far too soft -- his instincts are clouded by sentiment. But Barnes makes himself stay put; he’s cast his lot in with Rogers and resolved to try and trust. What else can he do?

 

The oats are clumpy and charred. He eats them anyway.

 

After breakfast, they venture out into the surrounding forest, marking out a few paths toward the waterway -- escape routes, if it turns out that they’ve been pursued. They walk several miles before the exertion makes Rogers concede that he needs to return to the cabin. Barnes accompanies him. They eat a silent lunch of tinned soup and Rogers naps on the sofa for an hour. By the time he wakes, it’s started to snow; Barnes stands on the porch and lights a cigarette, brushing the wet flakes off his coat and watching Rogers make quick work of cleaning the outhouse. When Rogers comes stomping back up to the porch, pink-cheeked from the cold wind and hair dampened by snow, he says, “Thanks for all the help, Buck.” His tone is light and warm. Teasing.

 

“You’re welcome,” Barnes replies, and it earns him a broad smile.  

 

They troop back inside, tracking water and shedding layers of soaked clothes. Barnes goes upstairs to find a dry pair of pants and spends a minute lingering at the window. The glass is starting to frost over as the temperature drops, and he forces himself to stay for a minute longer, glaring through the foggy pane. The sky is a solid mass of gray, and the snow seems to be pressing in, covering, enveloping everything. His stomach lurches, but he doesn’t look away. _This is why you’re here_.

 

When he comes back downstairs, Rogers is changing his damp bandages by the tiny kitchen sink. Barnes’s eyes can’t help but be drawn to the raw pink scars clustered over Rogers’s throat and chest. The sight makes him angry all over again, and he has to go right back out on the porch for another cigarette.

 

He flips the flimsy carton around in his fingers while he lights up. It’s a ridiculous indulgence, just like the bag of Hershey bars stashed in his duffel, and it’s grounding too -- Hydra wouldn’t have given him cigarettes or chocolate. Now he can have them whenever he wants. Hell, he’ll smoke his lungs black and get as fat as a walrus if he wants to.

 

Barnes watches the thin gray smoke curl in the cold air as he leans against the groaning rail. He tries to picture Romanoff, with her spotless clothes and elegant precision, living in a dump like this. Somehow he can’t quite imagine it.

 

A dump. He frowns around the cigarette. In his mind’s eye, there’s a flash of a tiny, dilapidated brownstone, an apartment cluttered with papers and drying laundry and books. _Jesus, Buck, we don’t have to live in a pigsty._ Behind him, the door jostles and then opens slowly, duct tape groaning around the hinges. Rogers pokes his head out the door.

 

“You’re going to run out of smokes at that rate,” Rogers says mildly. His chest is neatly bandaged up, broken flesh tucked away and out of sight under a sweater, and Barnes spares a moment to be grateful that Rogers didn’t ask him to help.

 

“Then I’ll run out,” Barnes grunts. “Get inside. You’ll freeze.”

 

“You’re not wearing a coat.”

 

Barnes stubs his cigarette out in the snow and goes back inside.

 

Rogers has a spread of file folders and papers fanned out on the carpet, and he makes no effort to hide them, sitting back down on the floor. Barnes wanders near enough to get a glimpse of the nearest folder. “Sharon sent them,” Rogers says, before Barnes can ask. “Files on Ross and some of Strucker’s old personnel lists.” He smiles a little but doesn’t seem very amused. “For such a secretive bunch, Hydra sure has a weakness for hard copy.”

 

Barnes knows that well enough -- he’s combed through every page of his own file thoroughly enough to recite them in his sleep. “Was I clean?” he asks impulsively. “When we lived together?”

 

Rogers twists around to look at him curiously. “I wouldn’t say you were _messy,_ but you didn’t mind clutter like I did.”

 

Barnes makes a noncommittal noise and pulls his boots and socks off. Rogers keeps looking at him. Barnes knows why. He doesn’t usually ask questions about the past. It isn’t that he thinks Rogers will lie to him, exactly -- he doesn’t like learning about himself from someone else, especially such an obviously biased source.

 

When Rogers is fully engrossed with his files, Barnes goes upstairs and finds the small notebook and pen in the inner pocket of his backpack. Sitting on the bed, he flips it open until he finds the most recent page and adds ‘ _Average cleanliness, tolerated clutter_ ’ to the page. He caps the pen and takes a moment to look over the latest additions.

 

_Lost both front teeth at age seven._

 

_Dislikes onion rings. (Confirmed.)_

 

_Skin easily irritated by heavy wool. (Confirmed.)_

 

He closes the notepad and places it back in its pocket. A headache pinches at his temples, and he lies down across the lumpy mattress. The heat has started to leach up into the second floor, and if it keeps up, they might be able to sleep here tonight. He stares up at the wood-grain ceiling for a while, letting his mind drift; losing time helps to ease the pressure in his head, sometimes.

 

A minute -- or an hour -- later, he startles at the sound of ripping paper. He hears Rogers curse. There’s a pause, then footsteps, more crinkling, and the subtle scent of burning paper. Barnes sits up and slinks over to the staircase.

 

Rogers is standing in front of the pot-bellied stove. He’s distraught. His face is red. His hands are fisted, clutching an empty file folder. Barnes feels his own body tensing in response, readying for a fight, but he quashes the impulse, forces himself to unwind his bunched muscles.

 

Rogers won’t fight him.

 

He perches on the staircase and watches calmly as Rogers paces, stalks around the kitchen, puts the folder down and then picks it back up again with fretful hands. It’s almost fascinating to see -- a display of rage distilled in its purest form. His own wariness lessens as Rogers’s agitation increases, and a wistful jealousy rises in its place. Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? He’s rubbed all raw. He’s so angry that all his anger has turned right around and eaten itself up.

 

Two years spent on the run, looking for his past, and now his head is screwed on about as straight as it can be. The truth is, it’s not ever going to get better than this. (Rogers thinks it will, but Rogers isn’t living inside his head either, is he?) There will always be a hollow place inside him, something important that the machines burned away.

 

Rogers doesn’t understand that yet. Barnes isn’t sure whether he wants him to or not.

 

Downstairs, Rogers backs away from the stove and sits down, heavily. He draws his knees up, breathing hard, and then fists his hands in his own hair. He doesn’t move for a long time, and Barnes stays where he is, keeping watch.

 

***********

 

Here’s the thing: Barnes had been charming once, apparently. A _nice_ boy. Polite, good-looking, sociable, running his big mouth and always knowing what to say.

 

He thinks he might have liked that guy. It’s a goddamned pity.

 

Now he stares down store clerks and waiters, enduring small talk and handing over Rogers’s money with a brusqueness that seems to discourage most salespeople from trying to start a conversation. It was far easier to steal things -- at least then no one tried to talk to him. But Rogers doesn’t like him stealing, so now he waits in tense silence for the drowsy teenaged clerk to finish tallying up his groceries.

 

There’s only one grocer in the Skagway township, one clerk on staff, and one register, which looks about as old as Barnes himself. The clerk scans the five family-size packages of peanut M&Ms in Barnes’s basket (Rogers likes them too) and gives him a judgmental look from under his bangs. The tag on his sweater says his name is Bradley.

 

He glares at the kid, and the kid glares right back. There’s almost a strange sort of kinship in their mutual irritation.

 

_Life’s shit, ain’t it, Bradley?_

 

Barnes forks over a wad of cash and leaves with two handfuls of plastic grocery bags -- enough groceries to last them a week, if they’re lucky. The main street is practically empty at this early hour, but he walks quickly. It’s a thirty-minute trek back to the cabin, and he wants to clear out before more people emerge and Rogers starts to worry. Grocery shopping has always been a bit of a test, after all: send him out on his own and see if he can buy milk without killing anyone. Besides, Rogers can’t go out in public now -- he’s too recognizable, too conspicuous. Unwanted attention is bound to come their way if Rogers wanders around wearing the face of a dead man.

 

It’s freezing, even though the sun is rising. He pulls up his scarf and breathes into it, sending a cloud of hot steam over his chilled face. There’s snow everywhere, capping the trees and hillsides, and it’s beautiful, in a brutal, terrible way. The drifts are getting deeper the further he goes into the forest and the slush works its way into his boots, squishing between his toes with every step. Not for the first time, he wonders why he insisted on hiding up north when he’s already had to spend so much of his life in the cold.

 

They should have gone to fucking Tahiti.

 

The cabin’s empty. Rogers’s coat and shoes are gone, and a trail of footprints in the yard lead west out toward the waterway. Barnes isn’t too concerned -- there’s an open book on the table, and Rogers’s bag is still stowed under his cot where he’d left it that morning. He puts away the groceries and takes a bag of M&Ms over to the lumpy sofa. The silence is pleasant, and he works his way through the files Rogers left in a neat pile on the kitchen counter.

 

He doesn’t think he ever worked with Strucker -- or at least the man didn’t make an impression at all -- but the information isn’t anything new. He’s gathered dozens of records like this himself in the months since the helicarrier. There are the usual false bank account listings, experimentation results, incident reports, and combatant profiles -- no surprises, and nothing that seems like it could have inspired such a reaction from Rogers.

 

In the second folder, there are a few paragraphs on _Maximoff, Wanda_ that he lingers over. Standard recruitment story, redacted details of chemical injection trials, psychological assessments and numerous invasive physicals, ability test after ability test. . . . Rogers had seemed confident in her loyalty, but the sheer scope of her power had made Barnes wary; in the end, he’d been relieved to part ways with her. The report makes mention of _Maximoff, Pietro_ , and he tucks that information away to ask about later.

 

By noon, he’s consumed both the files and the bag of M&Ms. He collects a pot for soup and two cans from the cupboard, but a loud rustling from the foliage behind the house makes him pause. He keeps the pot in his hand and reaches calmly for the pistol under the sink. There’s a shaving mirror next to the spoons and forks, and he angles it toward the window, searching for a glint of a sniper’s rifle or binocular lenses.

 

Rogers is sitting in the snow, wheezing.

 

Barnes drops the pot and runs outside, not even bothering to put on his boots. A quick scan of the perimeter fails to reveal any imminent threat, so he pockets the pistol and bends down to pull Rogers up to his knees.

 

“Report,” he demands.

 

Rogers is struggling to catch his breath. The yard is too open, but the cabin will at least offer them a little security -- Barnes hoists him up against his raspy protests and half-carries him back inside.

 

“I’m fine, I’m okay,” Rogers coughs, as soon as he’s settled in front of the stove. His nose is pink, but the rest of his skin is a sallow, ashy gray. He looks awful. “‘M fine.”

 

Barnes ignores him. He strips the blanket off the sofa and brings it over. “Oxygen?”

 

Rogers takes the blanket, looking resigned. “In my bag.”

 

The portable oxygen machine and its refill canisters are carefully settled in the back of the duffel; Barnes untangles the nasal cannula and attaches the tubing before gathering the whole thing up. He brings the prescription bottles too, filled with liquid nitroprusside concentrated to such a degree that it would likely burn out an average person’s blood vessels.

 

Rogers sits up as he comes back downstairs; he’s able to take the machine and slip the cannula in, turning it on with a few quick motions. Cool air slips out with a hiss as he readjusts the tubing behind his ears, and he breathes steadily and slowly until the grating, crackling sound starts to ease.

 

Barnes gets a bottle of water and presses it into Rogers’s hand, along with a full syringe. Rogers injects himself without a word and then lays back on the floor, closing his eyes and letting the oxygen do its work. Barnes leaves him alone to focus and cooks the soup; he figures that the warm steam can’t hurt either. After a while, Rogers is able to sit up and eat a little soup from a mug. Neither of them say much until the color’s returned to Rogers’s face and the oxygen tank is shut off and packed away again.

 

Rogers breaks the silence first. “I thought I could go down to the water and back. I was fine up until the last two miles.”

 

“You didn’t take your injections.”

 

Rogers’s silence is almost sullen. “I don’t like sleeping all day.”

 

“What else is there to do out here, huh?”

 

Rogers has no answer for that, and Barnes feels a nasty sort of satisfaction. _Stubborn idiot._ He briefly considers threatening to call Wilson, but the impulse is childish, not to mention unnecessarily risky. Instead he finishes the broth at the bottom of his bowl and sits on the countertop.

 

Rogers is frowning down into his mug. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says. “But I can’t stay in the cabin forever -- it’ll drive me nuts, Bucky. I need to be doing something, I need to---”

 

“You want to go on a hike, bring the tank,” Barnes interrupts flatly. “And take the injections, like the doc said.” He’s said his piece, and now he can practically see Rogers thinking tactics, trying to decide whether it’s worth a fight or a surrender, whether either of them can even handle a fight. He watches patiently as Rogers’ frustration turns inward.

 

“I wasn’t thinking,” Rogers says finally, chastened. “Sorry, Buck.”

 

There’s a moment of odd disconnect, like a moving picture in front of Barnes’s eyes, overlaying his vision. _Sorry, Buck_. He sees the same face a hundred different ways: small and thin, pale and flushed, broad, chiseled, bruised, and red with laughter. _Sorry, Buck_.

 

He shakes away the double-vision and offers Rogers a conciliatory shrug.

 

The rest of the afternoon is subdued. Medication this late in the day makes Rogers sluggish and prone to dozing off whenever he sits down, and Barnes takes advantage of it. While Rogers sleeps upstairs, he sets up his makeshift hotspot on the counter and powers up the tablet Wilson had given him before they left. Rogers may think radio silence is safest, but Barnes needs to know what’s happening.

 

He ignores the gossip sites and major news outlets -- they hardly ever know anything worthwhile. A few careful searches through forums and newsgroups unearth better results: Maria Hill has been named civilian co-chair of the Security and Regulation Council. Sharon Carter is the CIA liaison to the SRC. No recent activity from Wilson, Maximoff, or Barton.

 

There’s still no sign of Stark.

 

As he’s scrolling through the local news, an email pops up on the tablet, bypassing his browser security. The sender is a chain of numbers and letters -- there’s no subject heading. He opens it.

 

_How is he?_

 

Romanoff.

 

He closes the window and manages to get through two games of solitaire before the next message pops up.

 

 _You can answer here or on the phone_.

 

He spares a moment to wonder if she was monitoring their location for a wireless signal before he types a terse, ‘Functional, sleeping’. Before he can shut off the tablet, her reply pings back:

 

_Thank you._

 

He switches it off and hides it in the lining of his backpack before dismantling the hotspot and tucking it away too. When Rogers wanders downstairs a half-hour later, sleepy-eyed and yawning, Barnes makes sure he’s settled back on the sofa like he’s been there all along.

 

“Report,” he says.

 

Rogers gives him a small, pained smile. “I’m breathing okay now, and I’m feeling a lot better. Thanks, Buck.”

 

Barnes nods and decides to say nothing more -- he understands shame. It was one of the first genuine feelings he’d experienced after years of nothing but mindless animal fear. He stands up and gets a bottle of water. Rogers follows him into the kitchen, his stride hesitant.

 

“You read the files,” he begins, after Barnes has finished drinking.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Did Strucker ever ---” Rogers stops, no doubt searching for a kinder intimation. His insistence on wrapping cold truths in warmer words is an odd habit, one that Barnes can’t emulate himself, but he’s grown accustomed to it. “Did you ever meet him?”

 

“I wasn’t hired out to him, so far as I know. He wasn’t a big player when I was Lukin’s, and by the time Pierce got me, he was out of luck. Pierce didn’t like to loan me out internationally. Too risky.”  

 

Rogers shakes his head but is otherwise composed. It’s a relief -- early on, his looks of horror and open displays of grief hadn’t done anything but rattle them both.

 

They’d both learned, he supposes.

 

Rogers picks up the folders, returned precisely where they’d been left that morning, and flips open the first one. His fingers are toying with a paperclip in the corner, sliding it back and forth on the stockboard. Barnes almost doesn’t ask -- he can find out either way, as Rogers is abysmally bad at covering his tracks -- but he decides to be blunt. Those folders wouldn’t have been left in plain sight if he didn’t want Barnes involved. “What are you looking for?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“In the files. You’re looking for something.”

 

“There’s just something that bothers me.” He chews on his lower lip and turns to face Barnes. “The more I look through this stuff, the stranger it seems. Hydra keeps records of everything. Copies of copies. They protect their operatives, even the lower tier ones -- they don’t like losing them, because it means they lose information. I just . . . what happened at Camp Lehigh. . . . "

 

"Zola."

 

"Yeah. Like he said, those tapes were his _brain_. Why would they destroy him just to distract us? Think of all the information he had, all the things he’d recorded, all the secrets he kept. It isn’t like Hydra to willingly lose all of that, even for a chance to kill me.”

 

“You think there’s a back-up drive.”

 

“It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Nat thinks so too. She promised she’d let me know if she and Sharon found anything.” Abruptly, Rogers throws the folders down on the counter in a fit of impotent frustration. “And I should be out there _helping._ If Zola’s alive ----”

 

“Then he’s mine,” Barnes cuts in, harsh.

 

“Bucky. . . .”

 

“It’s my right.”

 

There’s another silence. Rogers almost reaches out to touch him and then seems to think better of it. “Buck, we do need to contain him, but he might have information we need. There might be more connections than we can see -- they might have their fingers in the SRC even now. With so many of the other supervisors gone----”

 

“I killed them.”

 

Rogers looks very tired. “I know you did.” He scrubs one hand over his forehead. “Look, I don’t want to ask this of you, but we could use your help. There won’t be any active groundwork at all until I . . . until I’m better. But we can provide some backup for Nat, sort through the info she sends our way. We just can’t rush into this headfirst, okay? We have to be careful.”

 

 _That’s a little rich coming from you, ain’t it, pal?_ “Whatever you need, I’ll do it.”

 

The promise should have pleased him, but Rogers’s face crumples a little; he ducks behind his palms and takes a deep breath before straightening up.

 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

 

* * *

* * *

  _September, 2016_

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

Barnes has a sister.

 

There’s a whole five pages devoted to her in his notebook, little flickers of memory that don’t come remotely close to encapsulating an entire life he’s missed. He once had a file on her too, with newspaper clippings, tax reports, and a few glossy photographs he was able to find on the websites of previous employers -- the file’s gone now, lost in the flight from Berlin.

 

Her name is Rebecca. She’s an emeritus professor of Pan-American literature at Florida State University. She’s living in the Sherwood Park retirement community in Pensacola with her partner Marianne Stensaas, a former sales manager. She just celebrated her eighty-first birthday in June.

 

He has her current telephone number written on the inside cover of his notepad.

 

It took Barnes several months to connect the blurry images of an apple-cheeked girl with shiny brown braids to the younger sister listed on his family tree on the internet. In the beginning, especially, there had been no sense of recognition connected to the images that appeared in his head. He’d seen faces he didn’t know, heard voices he’d never heard before, seen places that he couldn’t have described even to himself. Most of what he remembered, he’d soon ended up forgetting again. But there were a few images that stuck: his parents, a woman with blonde curls and red lips, Rogers, and Rebecca.

 

Rogers gave him a photograph of Rebecca from his phone after Barnes lost his file. It was taken two summers ago when Rogers went to visit Rebecca and Marianne in Florida. Rogers calls it a “selfie.” He and Rebecca are smiling at the camera, their eyes crinkled up and their cheeks pressed together. It’s a startling contrast -- Rogers, who looks so young, and Rebecca, whose skin is leathery and delicate, whose eyes and mouth are bracketed by laugh lines, whose hair is a bright, unapologetic silver and still done up in braids. It’s incontrovertible proof that time’s passed him by, but he looks at the picture and sees a scrawny girl sitting on an equally-scrawny Rogers’s shoulders.

 

Barnes keeps the photo tucked securely in the inside pocket of his coat.

 

Rebecca had a son from her first marriage, but he’d been killed while driving drunk, according to the police report. There’s no one else of their family left. Their parents have been dead for almost forty years; they died within two years of each other of late-stage lung cancer. It’s funny -- he can’t recall the sound of their voices, but he remembers that their apartment smelled like cigarette smoke. Rogers told him that as a kid, he’d never been able to spend much time at the Barneses’ place, on account of his asthma and all that smoke.

 

He doesn’t remember much about Rebecca either; he was eighteen when she was born, and Rogers believes that might be why. But what he does have is good. His memories of her are warm, comfortable, uncomplicated. She liked to hang on his shirttails and sit on his knee to read. He cut slices of pear for her. He called her ‘stringbean’. He’d loved her a lot, he thinks. He almost calls her number dozens of times, always stopping himself just before dialing.

 

_Just call her, Buck. She’d want to know_ , Rogers always says. But if he calls, then he’ll have to explain what happened.

 

It's kinder if he doesn't call.

 

*********

 

Rogers starts sending regular text updates to Wilson and Carter. After a month, he’s confident enough that they haven’t been tracked that he talks to Wilson every day to check in and leaves the wireless signal on continuously.

 

It’s a big damn mess. Carter, Hill, and Barton are cooperating uneasily with the new SRC in order to monitor the amendments to the Accords. There’s a great deal of infighting between council members. Carter sends word that Wakanda has formally declined to participate in the international hearings for the amendments. By Hill’s account, Secretary Ross is being surprisingly cooperative -- being partially responsible for the heavily-publicized death of a national hero would do that to a fella, Barnes supposes. The general public opinion is still very mixed, but Hill thinks the tide is turning in their favor.

 

Nevertheless, Rogers’s team is scattered all over the country. Wilson and Maximoff are in hiding but still active on the streets; they’re in Cincinnati right now on Zemo’s trail. Lang has fucked off back to California, but there’s word of Dr. Pym’s daughter being eyed by the SRC for recent acts of vigilantism around San Diego. Rhodes remains in the Mount Sinai intensive care unit but reportedly is stabilizing. There’s still no official statement from Stark Industries, and Stark himself continues to be noticeably absent from press conferences.

 

Rogers spends his days hunched over Barnes’s tablet or with his ear to his phone, trying to plan out routes and help Wilson and Maximoff stay safely underground. His desperation to be active is almost palpable -- the inhospitable terrain, the isolation, and his own physical limitations are wearing him dangerously thin. Barnes quietly begins to search for other safehouse options. It’s clear that they can’t remain here through the winter.

 

A routine develops. They stay in the cabin when the weather’s bad and venture out when it’s warm. They eat tinned soup and chocolate. They play endless games of cards in front of the stove. (Rogers is a dirty card-counting cheat.) Barnes takes long walks up the cliffside and down to the waterway. He glares at Bradley while he buys the groceries. Rogers sleeps and draws the New York skyline on scraps of paper and sends Romanoff emails that go unanswered. He has to use his oxygen again after an attempt at jogging. Barnes is always cold at night, no matter how many blankets he piles on his cot.

 

Reprieve comes in the form of a request from Carter.

 

***

 

“Ready?” Rogers asks -- not for the first time, either.

 

_Chrissakes, what makes you think I won’t be ready now when I told you I was ready five minutes ago?_ “Yeah, I’m ready.” Barnes fits the last canvas-covered bundle into the back seat of the pickup truck and layers it with tarp. It took a good hour longer than they’d planned for to empty the stash that Carter’s associate had left them, but they’ve got everything they need now. If they don’t stop, they’ll still be able to make it to Klukwan by early morning.

 

“Thank you, Agent May,” Rogers says, giving an off-hand salute to the empty cabin. “Let’s go, Buck.” He opens the passenger door and retrieves his furred ear-flap hat, scarf, and thick glasses. It’s an amateurish disguise, but neither of them are particularly skilled in that regard. The Winter Soldier had never needed disguises -- he was never seen in the first place.

 

Barnes climbs into the driver’s seat and takes the keys from Rogers. The keychain is a bright yellow smiley face. _Very funny, Carter_.

 

Rogers twists around to look in the back. “You don’t think they’ll scrape up the floor, do you? I don’t want to ruin Sharon’s truck.”

 

“It might get shot up anyway.”

 

Rogers looks a little pained, but he sits back and buckles his seatbelt. Barnes starts the engine and rolls back onto the road. The paving is shit, but at the very least it’s warmer and there isn’t much ice. The sun is out and there are visible slivers of blue sky, and he can breathe a bit easier.

 

Barnes drives, and Rogers talks.

 

It’s nice, listening to Rogers’s stories. At first Rogers had seemed to think that if he just told Barnes what he couldn’t remember that would be enough to jog his memory, set his brain right. It had only ended up frustrating them both. It’s easier now -- there are no expectations in his stories anymore.

 

By the time they’re on the interstate, Rogers has already happily described Wilson’s embarrassing first encounter with Lang and recounted the time he caught one of Schmidt’s soldiers by tripping off a fire-escape and accidentally landing on top of them. Barnes smiles at his obvious amusement; it would be nice to be able to return the favor, but he has a very limited repertoire. He does remember being punched in the face once during a mission and losing one of his canines. He’d finished the fight with blood seeping down his chin, and his handlers had carefully collected the tooth and reattached it. Immediately afterwards, he’d bitten one of the doctors so hard it fell out again.

 

It’s funny, but he has the feeling that Rogers might not think so.

 

After an hour or so, Rogers stops talking and pulls out the tablet to review their plans; he likes to write them down, chart them out. Barnes lets him work even though he wishes that he would keep talking. The traffic is so light that they only pass their second car after sixty miles of empty road. There’s a yellow dog sticking its head out the back-seat window, tongue lolling out and spit flying in the wind. Rogers smiles at it and puts his fingers on the glass like he can reach through and pat it. “Hey, you think we should get a dog, Buck?” he asks.

 

“Now?”

 

Rogers laughs. “No, not now. Someday, I mean, when we’re settled. I always wanted one.”

 

Barnes likes dogs, or at least he likes the idea of them -- he’s seen plenty, but he doesn’t remember the feeling of petting one. “Why didn’t you?”

 

“Made me sneeze. It felt like I was allergic to everything back then.”

 

“Huh.” It’s a nice thought, having a dog. A big one, maybe, not one of those little yappy ones.

 

“We could get a chihuahua,” Rogers says. “They’re cute. Sam’s mom has one.”

 

“No.”

 

“Why not?” Rogers is grinning again. Teasing.

 

He feels his own lips turn up at the corners. “You’d probably sit on it and squish it.”

 

Rogers’s phone beeps. In an instant, his expression changes and he straightens, alert. “It’s Wanda,” he murmurs. His fingers tap over the screen and scroll down. “Change of plans. She and Sam engaged Zemo -- Sam’s hurt.”

 

Barnes’s stomach feels a little hollow. Rogers types furiously, and a moment later his phone chirps again. His shoulders relax a fraction. “He’s okay. Just a broken rib, and they got it treated. Zemo's disappeared on them. They’re staying low for now.”

 

They keep driving, but the light mood is gone. Rogers sits in worried silence, texting, scrolling through the tablet obsessively, and looking out the window. He’s upset, and Barnes has no reassurances to offer.

 

**********************

 

The human brain is a remarkable thing.

 

At least, that’s what Barnes has been told. His synapses were fried, and then they healed, and then they were fried again. No one seems to know whether the damage will ever fully repair itself, but he doubts it. It’s been two years since he was last wiped, and he wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night and can’t remember what he did that morning. Other memories are so fresh and visceral that it’s almost like his brain is recreating them in living color, trying to compensate for the piss-poor job it’s doing with everything else.

 

Too often, he remembers what he’d most like to forget.

 

***

 

The tiny safehouse is crowded, stinking of sour bodies, exhaustion, and blood. Maximoff sits with her head on her knees, crying noiselessly. Barton’s bandaging Lang’s slashed arm with shaking hands. The only sound is Carter’s hushed voice as she argues furiously with someone on the phone. Wilson comes out of the bedroom, his eyes red-rimmed, and leans his head back against the wall.

 

Barnes can’t think. He wants to move, get out of the room and away from the smell of grief, but he can’t. He can’t leave.

 

There’s a knock on the door.

 

Barnes reaches for his weapon -- Carter does too, her electric staves powering up with a low hum. There’s a pause. Wilson straightens up, casts a grim glance around the room, and then goes to open the door a crack. His back stiffens, and he immediately moves to slam it.

 

Romanoff must read it in his face, because her hand darts inside to brace against the door. “Is he alive?” she demands.

 

“Why? You here to finish him off?” It’s sharp and cruel and very unlike Wilson.

 

Romanoff’s lips tighten. Barnes unlocks the safety on his gun and takes a measured step forward, but she backs off, shows her palms. “Is he alive?”

 

She’s not going to plead with them, Barnes can tell. If they order her to get out, she’ll probably go. Wilson looks at her, the hard resolve in his face already wavering, and seems to make his choice. “Steve’s alive.”

 

Barnes watches relief ripple subtly through Romanoff’s body -- her shoulders slump, her head lowers. Wilson glances back at Barnes and then moves out of the threshold. “You want to see him?”

 

Her eyes widen, just a little. He’s surprised her.

 

Barnes steps aside too but keeps his gun cocked in his hand. The room is silent, watchful eyes following the three of them as Wilson leads them back to the bedroom. There are blood-stained linens in a pile on the floor, but at least the worst of Rogers’s burns are hidden under fresh bandages. Barnes goes to the plastic lawn-chair at his bedside and sits down, watching Romanoff’s every movement as she approaches the bed.

 

“Surgery?” she asks.

 

“Not an option right now,” Wilson answers, leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed. “Damage is too severe. He’s been unconscious all night.” He takes a shuddery breath, squares his shoulders. “The prognosis isn’t good.”

 

Romanoff perches herself on the edge of the bed, ignoring Barnes’s stare. Her hands are steady as she peels back the blankets, checks the bandages, examines the angry red skin, takes his pulse. Finally, she touches Rogers’s face, lets her fingers ghost over the healing skin on his cheek. She looks up suddenly, directly at Barnes. There’s anguish in her eyes, a deep, private flicker of feeling.

 

She’s letting him see it.

 

“I can save him,” she says -- to Barnes, to Wilson, maybe to herself. She lets her hand curl into the short hair at Rogers’s nape and calmly turns to face Wilson again. Barnes sits back, waits. “I’ll tell them that Steve’s dead.”

 

Wilson’s mouth drops open. “You’ll . . _.no_. No way.”

 

“If Steve’s down, there’s no threat to him. The search stops while Ross and the SRC try to keep themselves from being implicated in the death of a national hero. They’ll pull back. They’ll be in a tailspin. They never wanted him dead.”

 

“What about Stark?” Wilson pushes himself up from the wall, clearly struggling for words. “Shit, how does that help our case?”

 

“They won’t arrest him.”

 

“Then he’ll drink himself to death.”

 

“I know you don’t trust me anymore, but I can fix this.” Romanoff pauses, her attention flickering between Rogers and the seething Wilson. “Let me talk to Tony, let me talk to the SRC. You have to let me handle it. Steve didn’t, and this is what happened.”

 

“You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve, Natasha.”

 

She keeps talking, like she didn’t even hear him. “This time, listen to me and let me do it my way. Let me protect him.”

 

Barnes decides it’s time to put in his two cents. “Let her.”

 

“Are you _serious_ , man?”

 

“Let her. And if she betrays us, we kill her.”

 

“Whoa, whoa, hold up ----”

 

“Agreed,” Romanoff says instantly. "даю слово." Barnes nods, replaces the safety, and holsters the gun. Wilson looks extremely upset, but he rubs his face before returning to the main room, no doubt to tell the others that there’ll be no more fighting today. Romanoff doesn’t stay either. She leans over and kisses Rogers’s cheek, her eyes closed, lingering close for an extra moment. When she stands up, her parting words are for Barnes.

 

_Take care of him_.

 

***

 

They reach the limits of Klukwan at three forty-five in the morning.

 

It’s still dark, and the headlights are far too bright for a stealthy approach. Barnes shuts off the engine a mile away from their target, and Rogers unbuckles his belt. “I can walk. I’ll take two of the packs.”

 

“One,” Barnes says. He gets out of the truck and starts to haul the bundles out of the back. Rogers squares his jaw but doesn’t argue, shouldering one of the packs while Barnes takes the other two, balancing them on either side of his hips. He slings his rifle under his arm, and Rogers checks his handguns before slipping them into his jacket. He tosses the hat and glasses back into the cab, and they hike down into the valley.

 

The power station is remote, a small, squat building overrun by brush and debris. According to Carter’s contacts, it’s been defunct for over sixteen years, and by the looks of it, maybe longer -- there are patches of moss clinging to the razor-wire fence. Rogers does a quick thermal scan.

 

“No heat signatures,” he reports. “You getting anything?”

 

“Nothing breathing.”

 

The chain links are so rusty and old that Rogers rips a comfortable door right through the back gate. They plant the bundles in a perfect triangle around the building and Rogers works on a side entrance while Barnes scouts the roof. There’s nothing up there to see but half-rotten branches and a sizable collection of abandoned bird nests, but he finds a maintenance hatch and opens it carefully. A gust of stale, musty air hits his face, and he spares a moment to regret not taking a filter-mask along.

 

Stupid. He’s getting too soft.

 

He’s halfway down the hatch-ladder when his earpiece crackles.

 

“Clear,” Rogers says. “All clear up there?”

 

“Yes.” He gets to the end of the ladder and lets himself drop two feet down onto a catwalk. He can see Rogers down in the open room below, keeping close to the walls. “In sight. I’m coming down.”

 

If this ever truly was a power station, it clearly isn’t now. Its innards have been gutted, and all that’s left are few empty desks and a locked storage room filled with empty shipping containers. Rogers takes the EMP detector and scours the walls and the floor while Barnes checks every corner for possible security devices or concealed cameras. Between the two of them, they find five separate alarms and two shock-traps; dismantling them takes time, but it’s still relatively under-secured for a base.

 

“Sharon’s right -- this was definitely Hydra’s.” Rogers peels off his gloves and shakes his head. “She was sure there would be something big. Zemo’s been trying to make remote contact with it for days. There’s something he wants here.”

 

“He might have already taken it. Probably got wind of us and cleared out.”

 

Rogers makes no effort his hide his disappointment. “It’s possible. Sam and Wanda lost his trail a few times along the way. He could have had time.” He doesn’t seem entirely convinced, though, and he circles around the room again, pressing against the walls and squinting at the floors. Barnes brings over the thermal imager, and a slight cold spot turns out to be leaking air from a panel in the floor. It takes a little more effort to prise the tiles up, but when they do, another ladder stretches down in front of them.

 

“Gotcha,” Rogers murmurs, searching in his pockets for a flashlight. They climb down slowly, but there are no traps waiting for them -- just a tiny, low-ceilinged cellar with two computer terminals and a single light-bulb.

 

Barnes approaches the central terminal, studying its large, bulky monitor and dusty cables. A brand-new modem and hard-drive are sitting on the table. He pulls out the padded desk chair in front of it; there’s a layer of dust on the seat too. “The computers shouldn’t be here. They wouldn’t have left any electronics behind.” He pushes the chair back in, and the wheels grind against the floor. “And if they can’t take it with them, they destroy it. Standard procedure.”

 

Rogers peers underneath the desk. “It’s plugged in.” He straightens up as Barnes reaches for the keyboard. “It’s probably rigged, Buck. Be careful.”

 

Barnes fishes in his jeans pocket for one of Romanoff’s decoder chips and inserts it into the drive. The inside of the port is sticky with grime, and it takes a minute for the screen to warm up. Rogers fires up the second terminal while Barnes waits for the program to do its work.

 

“Buck, there’s nothing on here. It’s dead.”

 

“Nothing?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“How reliable is Romanoff’s program?”

 

“It’s top-notch. If it says nothing’s there, I trust it. You getting anything from yours?”

 

“There’s something, but the files are locked, and I can’t download anything. C’mere.”

 

Rogers tries his hand at it too, but nothing works -- all they get are politely-worded pop-ups asking for verification codes. “Okay,” Rogers says, when they’ve exhausted all the code-cracking knowledge between them, “even if we can’t get into the files themselves, we should be able to see the activity logs, shouldn’t we? If we can find when the data banks were last accessed, we might have a better idea of when Zemo could have wiped the system.”

 

It takes a few more moments of searching, Rogers swearing under his breath each time they’re rebuffed. “I wish Nat was here,” he tells Barnes ruefully. “She’s a lot better at this.”

 

There’s a spark and a muted crackle, drawing their attention back to the second terminal. The monitor buzzes and then lights up, a large dialogue box popping up in the center of the screen. Barnes eyes it warily, but Rogers is already moving toward it. “Careful,” he cautions, taking Rogers’s place at the first terminal. “What is it?”

 

There’s a click and a pause. “It’s the activity log,” Rogers says slowly. “That’s . . . strange.”

 

“When was the last download?”

 

Rogers bends over the screen. “Thirty seconds ago.” It hits them both at the same time, and Rogers flings out his hand. “Buck, get back----!”

 

Light flares in front of Barnes’s face, and Rogers shouts. Barnes gapes down at his own arm. Thin bolts of electricity are arcing from his shoulder down to his wrist, casting a blue glow over the metal. He tries to let go of the mouse, but his hand won’t respond; the joints are locked tight. The bolts are growing larger, brighter -- reaching up with his right hand, he forcibly pries his fingers away, clenching his teeth against a sudden wave of shuddering pain.

 

The electricity vanishes. His arm is tingling.

 

“Bucky!” A frantic hand presses against his back, clasps his elbow. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

 

“I’m fine,” he says. He curls and uncurls his fingers as Rogers turns him around and reaches for his flesh hand. The palm is swollen and flushed with blood, already blistering.

 

Rogers’s face is white. “Your hand. . . “

 

“It’ll heal.” He slips his palm from Rogers’s gentle grip and swivels his left arm, lets the plates recalibrate -- they glide as smoothly as ever, with no glitch. “It’s fine. Doesn’t look like there’s any damage. Guess they did lay some traps after all.”

 

Rogers takes an audible breath. “Alright. Let’s just . . . let’s just call it. I don’t think we’re going to get anything, at least not without electrocuting ourselves.”

 

Barnes stares at him. “There’s something there. We can try again.”

 

“It’s not worth it. I’ll let Sharon know it was a bust.”

 

There’s no point in arguing. He’s learned that when Rogers has that look on his face, he’s bound and determined to be a stubborn ass. Barnes casts one last look at the terminals and then bends down to remove the decoder chip.

 

“Leave it, Buck,” Rogers says. “We’ve got more, and everything’s going up anyway.”

 

They do one last sweep before they go topside. Barnes suppresses the vague sense of dissatisfaction nagging at him as best he can -- he doesn’t like to venture back into a Hydra base without at least getting something out of it for his trouble.

 

“You want to do the honors?” Rogers asks as soon as they finish activating the three implosion caskets around the base.

 

“It’d be my pleasure.”

 

Rogers hands him the detonator. At least, Barnes thinks, there’s some consolation to be found in blowing a Hydra nest sky-high.

 

***

 

Rogers calls Carter as soon as they drive away, leaving nothing behind them but a rapidly-dissipating cloud of smoke and a ring of dry, scorched dirt. He puts the phone on speaker, and the two of them do their best to debrief, describing the format of the computers, the layout of the traps and cameras. Rogers is full of apologies that Carter is quick to wave away.

 

“It’s fine,” she repeats, sounding distracted. “It’s one less base to worry about, and I’m just relieved you weren’t hurt. Are you sure there’s no damage, Barnes? I have a contact in Calgary who could do some maintenance on your arm.”

 

“No.” He doesn’t care if Jesus Christ Himself is offering -- he’s not going to let anyone poke around in his arm again. There’s a pause, and he tacks on a belated, “Thanks.”

 

“Don’t mention it.” Carter sounds amused. “Oh, and Steve? Next time take the decoder chips with you. Natasha says she’s tired of handing them out like candy.”

 

“Tell Natasha that next time she can come and get them herself.”

 

“It’s your funeral,” she says. “Take care and keep an eye out. I might have something else for you boys in a few days.”

 

“We’ll be here, Sharon.”

 

The line drops. Rogers puts his phone away and leans back in his seat, slipping the ridiculous glasses back on his nose. “You want me to drive for a while?”

 

Barnes shakes his head. He doesn’t like being in a vehicle if he isn’t driving it. “The arm’s okay, if that’s what you’re thinking. Burn’s already healing.” The electrical nerve connectors at the wrist and the shoulder are still registering the presence of heat, but it’s not scalding his skin and the joints are moving okay. He rolls his shoulder reflexively, plates shivering open before settling back down.

 

“Okay,” Rogers says softly. He props his arm on the ledge of the window and peers up at the sky. “Looks like it might snow later.” He cuts a glance back over at Barnes. “Do you think there were actually files in that hard-drive?”

 

Barnes takes a moment to consider it. Leaving any trace of a computer system behind is still an odd violation of Hydra’s usual procedure, but as it was already booby-trapped so effectively, they may not have bothered. “Hard to say, but I doubt it. They probably left a false data signature as bait.” He rolls his shoulder again -- the feeling of sourceless heat is distracting. “Lucky it got the arm that can handle a few hundred amps. It would’ve fried you.”

 

Rogers sighs. “I would’ve preferred if it didn’t fry either of us.”

 

“Can’t always get what we want.”

 

They lapse into silence. Rogers leans back in his seat and shifts to face the window. They pass a semi-truck. Snow starts to fall in light, wet flakes. Barnes endures it as long as he can before breaking. “Just say it.”

 

“What?’

 

“I can hear you thinking. Say it.”

 

Rogers sighs again, looking a little wry. “Look, it’s just . . . You said you were done with this. All of it. If we keep offering, Sharon’s going to keep finding things for us to do. It might get --- we might have to fight. Are you sure you want this?”

 

Does he? _Now_ **_there’s_ ** _a question, pal_. “I’m good at it.”

 

“Not what I asked, Buck.”

 

Barnes lets his fingers flex over the wheel. He looks at the divots of his left hand, the smooth panels, the intricate knuckles and subtly indented wrist -- it’s strange that they took so much effort to make it a perfect match to his real arm. Back then, it’s not like he would have been in any condition to notice if they hadn’t. He can feel Rogers’s eyes on him, patient. “I’ll tell you when it’s time to stop,” he says, and he almost means it.

 

* * *

* * *

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation: "You have my word." (My apologies for the ignorant Google!Russian.


	2. Part Two

* * *

 

_May 2016_

* * *

* * *

 

The Black Panther is graceful, clever, and utterly lethal.

 

There’s no more running -- not today. Barnes crawls off the glass-studded concrete with a grunt and levers slowly to his feet. Somehow he manages to stay upright, but his right leg is throbbing, his entire body growing numb with the intensity of the pain. He shifts, putting weight on it, and feels vomit rise in the back of his throat.

 

A head of dusty blond hair fills his vision as Rogers maneuvers under his flesh arm, pulling it across his shoulders to support him. The shield rises up in front of them. He can hear Rogers panting, and the smell of sweat and rust stings his nose -- the gash across Rogers’s back must be bleeding again.

 

Barnes looks over the top of the shield, perspiration burning in his eyes. His vision is blurring, melting the angular lines of the shadow stalking closer to them. Rogers’s hand tightens around his wrist.

 

“Hang on, Buck,” Rogers breathes. “Just . . . hang on, okay?”

 

For what? They’re beaten. The fracture in Barnes’s shin will require at least four days to heal fully, and if Rogers tries to carry him out, the additional weight will slow him down -- they’ll only be caught again. On his own, Rogers could probably fight to a stalemate, but if he’s trying to protect Barnes and himself, the Panther will have the high ground.

 

Rogers could run, of course, but he won’t. It’s not even worth arguing about at this point --  the man’s jaw is squared. They’ve been backed in a corner, and he obviously knows it, but he’s not going to stand down.

 

Barnes’s throat is parched. His lungs burn. He thinks of pushing Rogers out of the way, clipping him on the back of the head and surrendering himself -- maybe a deal of some sort could be negotiated. He’s plainly the target. If Rogers keeps his big mouth shut, he might make it out . . . .

 

The Panther is slinking closer, claws gleaming, one of those damnable taser-orbs hovering in his left hand. Those things hurt like a _bitch_. Barnes spares a moment to wish for a gun secreted in that suit somewhere -- it would be a kinder death than electrocution. It’s not an entirely baseless hope, either; the Panther is reputed to be ruthless but the consensus is that he dislikes inefficiency. If things go south, the execution will probably be quick. Maybe he’ll make it painless for Rogers, at least.

 

“You will listen now,” the Panther announces as soon they’re only a yard or so apart. “If you would prefer to return to your cells, I can arrange for it, but I would advise against it. I took a great risk to release you, and I would hate for the effort to go to waste.”

 

It’s news to Barnes. He’d assumed that that buffoon with the shrinking powers and his ant friends had succeeded in shorting-out the inner circuitry, or that Carter had hacked into the facility mainframe. Another bolt of pain shivers up his leg and his eyes water, but he forces himself to focus on the Panther -- this is a new angle. He can’t afford to miss anything.

 

“You . . . did Stark send you?” Rogers asks. His voice is hard, suspicious, but Barnes can tell that he’s been caught wrong-footed. It was the Black Panther, after all, who’d helped put them in Stark’s cage in the first place.

 

“I sent myself.” The Panther sounds amused, even through the distortion of his mask. “Perhaps it was naive of me to expect some measure of gratitude.”

 

“It’s been a difficult few days,” Rogers replies. He shifts his grip down to Barnes’s damp arm and gives it a warning squeeze. “You’ll have to excuse us.”

 

 _Also, you broke my fucking leg, pal. No thanks for that._ “Why?” he asks, just as Rogers says, “How’d you get us out?”

 

“It was not difficult.”

 

“Those containment cages were based on Stark’s Hulkbuster tech.” There’s a trace of disbelief in Rogers’s tone. “I was there when he first tested them.”

 

Barnes grits his teeth against a fresh ripple of panic. If they don’t bite it tonight, he’ll be dreaming about that cage for _months_.

 

The Panther’s head tilts slightly to the left. “If that is what you use to contain the Hulk, I no longer wonder at the damage he has done. It is a mediocre design.”

 

Rogers is speechless. Barnes takes the opportunity to duck his way out from behind the shield, batting Rogers’s restraining hand away. Both of the other men tense. “Did I kill someone?” he asks. They’re past the point of delicacy. “Someone important to you?”

 

It’s eerie, knowing that he has the Panther’s complete attention without being able to track the movement of the man’s eyes; he has an instant to wonder whether his mask and goggles had ever been as frightening to his own targets.

 

Rogers’s labored breathing stutters to a stop.

 

The Panther doesn’t so much as twitch. “It is unfortunate that you feel the need to ask that question. But no, you did not.”

 

Funny how the pinching hollowness in his stomach eases a fraction with that small reassurance -- one less sin to add to his list. Behind him, Rogers exhales softly through his teeth. Barnes feels his other knee spasm and lock; he’s got maybe ten minutes before he’s going down like a felled tree. Time to move this along. “What did I do? Why do you want me?”

 

The Panther lifts his hand toward his own neck, hesitates, and then slides the knuckle of his index finger along the seam under his jaw. There’s a soft _click_. The mask begins to collapse in on itself, impenetrable chain links slithering like quicksilver back into the collar of the suit.

 

At his back, Barnes feels Rogers’s body jerk, startled.

 

Barnes knows that face. He’s seen it in handsome portraits and covert recordings alike, and he feels like a fool. Considering that the Black Panther made his first appearance on U.S. soil at the same time as the Crown Prince of the sovereign nation of Wakanda, they’ve all been fools. The embarrassment at not having realized it sooner is more overwhelming than the surprise.

 

“Do you recognize my face, Winter Soldier?” Prince T’Challa asks. “I was there when you stole from the people of Wakanda.”

 

“Your Highness, Hydra was-----”

 

“I only know you from reports,” Barnes interrupts wearily. “When did this happen?”

 

T’Challa’s eyes narrow. “Five years ago, there was a theft reported in one of our largest mines in the north. Two five-hundred gram bricks of vibranium vanished and my chief of security was shot in the head as I watched.” He takes a step closer, his stare intense and unwavering. “Fortunately for her children, she did not die. We were left with no clue as to the identity of the foreign thief but for my own account. I have been looking for you ever since. You are astonishingly hard to find for a man with an arm of metal.”

 

“If you’re wanting the vibranium back, I can’t help you. It’s long gone by now.”

 

“I am aware of how the black-market works. I want information.”

 

“I have a few memory problems.”

 

“It would be in your best interest to make yourself remember, James Buchanan Barnes. The traditional punishment for trespassing and smuggling is death.”

 

A red-and-blue blur passes in front of Barnes’s face; Rogers has shouldered his way forward again. “If you know his name, Your Highness, you know what happened to him. The people responsible are the agents of Hydra who gave the orders, not him. And you said no one was killed -- this is senseless revenge.”

 

T’Challa’s dark eyes flash. “He _stole_ vibranium. It is an extremely serious offense, Captain. You have no concept of what one single gram can do. How you can carry such wealth in your hand and have no respect for what you wield---” He cuts himself off, a muscle leaping in his cheek. “It does not matter. I want to know how you were able to bypass our border security and gain access to the mine vaults. I want to know who sent you.”

 

“Rogers,” Barnes says. “Please.”

 

The shield dips and wavers, and Rogers reluctantly backs off.

 

“I’ll tell you what I can.” Barnes takes a breath, shifts his hips. “I don’t remember going to Wakanda, whether you believe me or not. If it happened in the last few years, it was under Alexander Pierce’s direction. That mean anything to you?”

 

T’Challa taps something on his right gauntlet. A panel chimes, and he extends his arm toward Barnes. “Speak clearly into it,” is all he says. “And do not lie.”

 

Barnes does what he can. He talks for fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. He has nothing to offer about the incident itself, though he doesn’t doubt that it happened. In the last few years, he’s gathered a decent cache of information about Pierce and his closest international associates, and there’s no point in keeping anything back. He guesses that most of his data is irrelevant, but T’Challa never interrupts, letting him speak without prompting or questions. Rogers stays quiet too, though he braces his arm discreetly against Barnes’s back when his leg starts to buckle and leaves it there after Barnes regains his footing. His hand is warm, even through a glove and a layer of clothing.

 

It’s an uncomfortable briefing. They’re useful so long as they know something, and he isn’t discounting the possibility that they might be disposed of anyway once their usefulness has been expended. He’s not the only one who’s thinking it either, if the coiled tightness of Rogers’s stance is any indication. There’s no delaying the inevitable, though -- eventually he starts to wind down, grasping for threads of possible leads, his energy sapped by pain and nerves. T’Challa’s face gives nothing away, though he does betray interest at an offhand mention of Klaw, a for-hire contractor that the STRIKE team had frequently used for overseas weapons smuggling. The name gets Rogers’s attention as well, enough to break his silence.

 

“Ulysses Klaw?”

 

T’Challa’s steady gaze flicks to Rogers immediately. “What do you know about him?”

 

“Not much. Stark knew of him. A black-market arms dealer, he said, a real unsavory character. When we found him, he was hiding on a fleet of decommissioned ships along the coast of Cape Hope. He made some sort of deal with Ultron for vibranium, but we weren’t able to catch him.” He offers up a wry half-shrug. “I guess we had bigger concerns at the moment.”

 

For the first time, T’Challa’s calm control truly falters -- there’s distress pulling at his lips, at the corners of his widening eyes. “Captain, you are _positive_ that Klaw himself was the supplier?”

 

Barnes glances back at Rogers, just a quick cut from his peripheral vision, but it’s enough to see that Rogers is taken aback by the prince’s urgency too. Something softens a little in Rogers’s face, and a thought, unbidden, floats into Barnes’s mind:

 

_Always such a sucker for a sad story._

 

“I don’t have access to the Avengers’ files right now, but I can send information your way if I find it, once things . . . once things settle down,” Rogers says. “If there’s something important at stake, I’ll do whatever I can.”

 

T’Challa stares at him with something akin to curiosity. His eyes drift to the shield at Rogers’s side and over to Barnes’s arm, and he turns off the recording device in his gauntlet. “You have given me enough. Go. The soldiers will soon discover your absence. Take the east emergency exit -- the security cameras are disabled.”

 

“Thank you,” Rogers tells him, naked gratitude in his voice.

 

T’Challa inclines his head and shifts his scrutiny to Barnes. “I let you go with this word of caution, Winter Soldier: should you set foot in Wakanda again, you will never leave it.”

 

“Understood.” So far as threats go, it’s not the worst he’s received this week.

 

As T’Challa turns his back, a clear dismissal, Barnes feels Rogers let go of his waist and lean forward. He grasps at Rogers’s sleeve, but Rogers is already a few steps out of reach, following after T’Challa as the man moves toward the staircase.

 

“Wait!”

 

T’Challa stops. His claws glitter at his sides, only half-sheathed.

 

“Your Highness,” Rogers says firmly, “Ross and SRC won’t stop here. If you’re one of us, they’ll come knocking at your door too.”

 

T’Challa turns his head. An unreadable smile tugs at his lips before it’s swallowed by the smooth glide of vibranium mesh. His empty white eyes gleam, like he’s still smiling behind the mask. “Tell them, Captain, that they are welcome to try.”

 

Without another word, he vaults fluidly over the banister and vanishes.

 

******************

 

_September 2016_

 

For five solid nights after the raid on the Hydra base, Barnes wakes up with the acrid smell of hot metal in his nostrils and coated on his tongue. It’s odd, smelling and tasting things long gone -- in his first day free from Hydra, he’d stolen a watermelon, and the sour-bitter flavor of the old rind had lingered in the back of his mouth for a full month -- but he’s grown used to it, in the same way he’s grown used to other things he has no hope of changing.

 

Barnes’s skin is still irritated and red around the socket of his left arm even though his burned palm healed up quickly enough; the niggling pain makes his sleep restless, fragmented. He gets up a half-dozen times each night to do another sweep of the cabin or check their weapon cache. He plays games of solitaire on his tablet and fixes a broken leg on the coffee table and oils all the guns until they gleam.

 

He’s bored out of his goddamn mind.

 

No word has come from Carter or Romanoff. Wilson and Maximoff are maintaining radio silence as well -- probably for good reason, since the hearings for the amendment of the Sokovia Accords will begin in two weeks. Overall, there’s a lot to think about and nothing to do, and that’s always been a bad combination.

 

Tonight is no different. It’s two in the morning, and Barnes wakes up in a cold, sticky sweat. He doesn’t remember what woke him. Across the room, Rogers’s cot is empty, the sheets tucked in with military precision. The blanket is still warm and the grass-and-sun smell of his shampoo is still on the pillow, so he can’t have gotten up more than a half-hour ago.

 

There’s a bucket with a jug of water and bar of soap in the corner. Barnes washes his hand and lathers his face, scratching his nails against the heavy growth of beard on his chin. He loses a few minutes in front of the mirror, studying the spread of wiry bristles. He could trim the beard, or take a razor to it. In the old photographs, he’d almost always been clean-shaven, his face exposed, his hair pomaded and artfully arranged; he thinks he might have been a little vain. He certainly isn’t now.

 

He dries his face with the hem of his shirt and goes downstairs.

 

The stove is lit, casting a dim circle of light over the floor. Rogers is sitting on the sofa in his underwear, old springs groaning every time he shifts. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything except staring at the carpet, but he looks up as soon as Barnes lands on the first step.

 

“Hey, Buck,” he murmurs. He sounds groggy.

 

Barnes nods to him and goes to the kitchen to make tea. He doesn’t like tea, but Rogers does, and they’re out of coffee. He contemplates hiking through the snow to get more coffee in Skagway tomorrow, and then he wonders fleetingly what might happen if he just kept walking. Maybe he’d keel over after a few thousand miles. Maybe he wouldn’t. He isn’t sure which possibility is more frightening. He puts the kettle on the range and waits for it to boil. Tea is only bearable if it’s syrupy sweet, so he hunts down a package of sugar and a chipped mug. He can feel Rogers’s half-lidded eyes following him sleepily, but he doesn’t say anything until Barnes has his stuff laid out.

 

“Nightmare?”

 

Barnes shrugs. “Probably.” He rips open the seal on the sugar packet with his teeth and spits it out onto the counter. “You too?”

 

“Nah. Couldn’t sleep, that’s all,” he says, but his hand is rubbing idly at his chest, pressing over his breastbone. He stopped wearing the bandages over a week ago, the skin now pink and unmarked, but looks are deceiving.

 

 _Son of a bitch_.

 

“You’re lying. It’s hurting again.”

 

Rogers doesn’t look the least bit indignant or sheepish about being caught out. He shakes his head and lets his hand drop back into his lap. “It’s just sore, is all.”

 

“Like hell it is. The thing’s probably breaking down. They said it wouldn’t hurt.”

 

“Well, they said a lot of things.” He flashes a tired smile at Barnes, and Barnes has to resist a sudden, unexpected urge to take him by the shoulders and shake him like a ragdoll. _Fuckin’ punk._ “And before you ask, I already took an extra dose. I’ll be fine.”

 

That’s the third time in two weeks that Rogers has had to take extra nitroprusside. They’ll run out at this rate. “How much is left?”

 

“Enough for another month, even if I have a few surprises. Clint knows someone in Juneau who can get me another prescription if I need it. But it’s a month away -- I shouldn’t need to take it anymore by then.” He kneads his chest with the flat of his hand and yawns, his eyes screwing shut.

 

“They sell motor oil in Skagway,” Barnes says. “Could probably use that instead.”

 

Rogers cracks open one eye. “I’m not drinking motor oil.”

 

“I never said you had to drink it -- just rub it on like Vaseline.”

 

Rogers’s laugh ends on a sharp, pained inhale, and he winces apologetically at Barnes. The pot’s boiling and kicking up steam, so Barnes turns around to take it off the range. They’re both silent while he tosses a few tea bags straight into the pot.

 

“That’s not the way you make it,” Rogers says. “Peggy would’ve had your head.”

 

“You want proper tea, you make it yourself.” He adds another tea bag, just for spite.

 

Rogers offers him another smile. “I really couldn't sleep,” he confesses. “I keep thinking about the team. I don’t --- I should be there with them.”

 

 _Yeah, you should._ It doesn’t make a lick of sense. Rogers gave up everything in the hopes of saving a friend, and in return he got a stranger with one arm and half a brain. It’s such a shitty trade-off that Barnes is honestly surprised that Rogers hasn’t sold him for parts.

 

“I'm worried about Sam.”

 

“Wilson can take care of himself.” In Barnes’s opinion, Wilson is many things -- nosy, friendly, and far too nice to people who don’t deserve it -- but he isn’t the least bit incompetent. Actually, out of the whole sorry bunch, he probably has his head screwed on the tightest.

 

“I know he can. I just worry. Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed this on him.”

 

Barnes pours himself a muddy cup of tea and considers retreating, but Rogers looks so goddamned _sad_ that he feels compelled to say, “Give him credit. He took the shield because he wanted to.”

 

Rogers is silent for a beat, thoughtful. “You’re right. Sorry.” He rubs his chest again and frowns. “I’m a funny mood tonight, I guess. You gonna drink all of that tea?”

 

Barnes snorts and reaches for the pot again, and the mug in his left hand shatters -- one moment he’s got it and the next it’s in shards on the floor. The sudden sound and the explosion of fragments startles them both. He hadn’t even felt it fall. Bending down to pick up the pieces is instinctive, but as he reaches out his left arm spasms and his right hand slaps down right on the debris. He jerks first at the pain and then again when he finally registers Rogers’s wary presence beside him.

 

“Hey, you okay? You cut yourself.”

 

Barnes looks at his flesh hand; there are a few tiny shards glinting in his palm.

 

“Yeah.” He doesn’t know what to say. He’d crushed the mug, squeezed too tight. He hasn’t misjudged his hand’s strength like that in years. Extending his right arm, he flexes the plates; they move cleanly, with no lag.

 

Rogers coaxes him over to the couch and cleans the shallow cuts, swabbing them with soap and water. It’s unnecessary, since his body will burn away infection anyway, but Barnes holds still and watches him wick the droplets of blood away. He tracks the deliberate movements, the shift of bulging veins under Rogers’s skin. For all his massive size, Rogers’s hands belong to a smaller man -- the palms are large but narrow, fingers slender and slightly tapered. His touch is gentle, careful.

 

Rogers doesn’t touch him much anymore.

 

“There,” Rogers declares, once he’s knotted a clean dishcloth securely around Barnes’s hand. “It should heal up soon. Your hand just can’t catch a break this week.” His thumb rubs unconsciously along the inside of Barnes’s wrist, moving with his pulse. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

 

Is he? The pain’s nothing -- a drop in the bucket -- and his arm is functional. It doesn’t explain the tantalizing urge he has to pretend that it’s worse, to soak up more of Rogers’s attention, more of his touch. They’re sitting so close their elbows are brushing, and he finds himself wishing (like a real chump) that the cuts had been worse so that Rogers would stay.

 

In those first few weeks after he’d been found, Barnes had tried. He really had. He’d tried so hard to remember, to be the guy that Rogers wanted back so badly. Some parts of the person he’d been before had made it out okay -- the Winter Soldier may not have had the capacity to love, but Bucky Barnes certainly had. There were echoes of brotherly affection that craved closeness, and Rogers had been all too eager to supply it in a cautious hug, a slap on the back, a pat on his shoulder, a hand on his arm . . . every time he’d turned around, Rogers had been there, offering when Barnes didn’t know how to ask. _You can come sit by me, Buck. Do you. . . is it okay if sit here? Can I share the bench with you, Bucky? You okay with me here?_

 

But then everything went to hell, and it just . . . stopped.

 

It’s stupid, but he misses it, and it feels like _loss_ when Rogers finishes fussing over his hand and lets go. It would be so easy, he thinks, to move closer, to lean in, to soak up another person’s warmth and breath and feel their chest rise and fall. Rogers wouldn’t push him away -- he’s kind to a fault. But the thought of doing it is paralyzing.

 

It’s pathetic. He’s pathetic.

 

Rogers shifts around, stretching out his legs, and looks over at Barnes. He opens his mouth.

 

 _Ask me. C’mon, ask me_.

 

“I’ll go dump this water out and sweep up the floor, and then I think I’m going to try to get some shut-eye,” Rogers says. He gets up and gathers the bowl and stained rag. “Wake me up if your hand starts bleeding again, Buck.”

 

Disappointment is a millstone in his gut. Barnes watches Rogers walk away and thinks that he should add the word _coward_ to his notebook.

 

*****************

 

Wilson shows up alone and unannounced on a snowy Sunday afternoon.

 

Barnes is already in position at the upstairs window with his rifle on his shoulder before he recognizes the figure in the driver’s seat of the blue SUV. Rogers realizes it a second later, shouting up the stairs to hold fire. Barnes puts the rifle down and watches from the window as Wilson parks the car and strolls out, cool as you please, practically subsumed in a puffy white coat.

 

The downstairs door opens with a loud bang -- it’s probably broken off its hinges again, _damn it_.

 

“Sam!” Rogers bounds out into the snow to meet him like it’s been three years instead of three months. Barnes can see the exact moment that he remembers that Wilson’s rib was recently broken, his half-raised arms stalling at his sides. Wilson breezes right up, though, and bridges the gap.

 

They hug for a long time.

 

When they finally pull away, they’re both red-cheeked and beaming. Rogers needles him about his silly coat before leading him eagerly inside by the elbow. Barnes closes the window. He can hear them talking downstairs, and he takes his time putting the rifle away, listening to their visitor complain cheerfully about the icy roads and the long drive. It’s . . . nice, he decides. It’s nice to hear Wilson’s voice again.

 

It takes a minute or two to dial himself down from _imminent danger_ to _one of Rogers’s pals_ , but once he does, he slinks soundlessly toward the stairs. Rogers is in the kitchen, digging in the cupboards and talking a mile a minute, and Wilson is sprawled all over the couch. He’s pulling off his snow-covered boots. His socks have stripes on them.

 

“I almost killed you,” Barnes announces from the landing. “Call ahead next time.”

 

Wilson waves at him. “Thanks for not shooting me.”

 

“You’re welcome.” Wilson doesn’t seem to be moving stiffly, but there’s a thick bulge under his t-shirt that looks like binding tape. “Your ribs any better?”

 

For an instant, Wilson seems taken aback. “Much better. Wanda really got after me to rest up.” He leans back and looks Barnes over, face open and friendly. “You look good, man. Did you pack on some weight?”

 

It’s nice to have confirmation -- he’d thought that his waist and thighs were filling out, muting the sharp thrust of bones and muscle. His face certainly looks softer in the mirror, less hollow, less hungry. “Yeah.”

 

Rogers comes back with an armful of granola bars, a few old MREs, and a can of soup. “That’s what I thought too. Speaking of which, pick your poison, Sam. You must be hungry if you drove all morning.”

 

Wilson (wisely) chooses the soup and helps Rogers chop up a couple of potatoes to add in. Barnes sits on the sofa and watches Wilson watch Rogers. The man’s expressions are easy to read, and his concern is palpable. Barnes may have padded himself out over the last few months, but Rogers is getting thinner -- evidently Wilson has already noticed it too.

 

When the food’s done, Barnes takes his portion and perches on the staircase for a better vantage point while Wilson describes the incident that had earned him his battered ribs. An ambush had gotten the better of them. Maximoff and Wilson had sent Redwing-II after the truck Zemo had been using to transport his equipment, and its signal had led them to a crowded Minneapolis street and a waiting SWAT team. Not wanting to injure civilians with a counterattack, they’d been forced to split up and run. In the process, one of Wilson’s wings was damaged by a bogey, sending him into an uncontrollable spiral. Luckily, he’d landed on a rooftop, but the fall had broken his ribs and Maximoff had barely been able to extract him before the cops caught up.

 

“We should’ve double-checked,” Wilson concludes. “Instead we ran right into a sting like a couple of dumbasses.”

 

Rogers looks outraged. “They should never have shot you right out of the air like that. You could’ve been killed.”

 

“When have the police ever hesitated to gun down a black dude? Only difference is this one had wings.” Wilson slurps up the dregs of his soup and sighs. “Wanda and I learned our lesson, and now we know that Zemo’s willing to use the regs against us.” He scowls down at the empty bowl. “Redwing’s a bust, though -- blown to pieces again. This time, I don’t think I’ll be getting a new one either.”

 

“Probably not,” Rogers says.

 

“Didn’t think so. Anyway, I’m not here to bring you guys down. I’ve got some good news too. At least I think it might be good.” He puts the bowl at his feet and pulls his phone out of his jeans, scrolling over the screen. “While we were chasing Zemo, Wanda was trying to contact some old associates -- you know, from her and Pietro’s days with Strucker. Turns out most of them are dead, but there was one who forwarded her info.” He points the screen toward Rogers, and Barnes abandons his dinner to go peer over their shoulders.

 

There’s a gallery of screenshots, all of them of a crisp manilla envelope and a few loose papers. Wilson thumbs through them and pulls up the first typewritten page. “This is the file for Dr. Heinrich L. Zemo of Leipzig, Germany, from the last payroll roster Strucker approved in 2014, and as far as we can tell, it’s legitimate.” He enlarges the top right corner of the document. “Take a look at his birthdate.”

 

The letters are faded and difficult to read, but _12-03-1913_ is unmistakable. There’s no date of death and his status is marked as ‘Active’. Barnes exchanges a look with Rogers.

 

“Alright,” Rogers says slowly. “Either Zemo’s a lot older than he looks, or he also took a long nap in an iceberg.”

 

“I’m going for option three.” Flipping over to the next screen, Wilson zooms in.

 

Rogers cusses.

 

“Yeah, that was my reaction too,” Wilson admits.

 

Leaning in, Barnes studies the black-and-white photograph with narrowed eyes. It’s of a middle-aged male with dark hair, a narrow jaw and weak chin, a long nose, and light-colored eyes, and it’s obviously not Zemo. He glances up to find Wilson staring at him.

 

“I don’t recognize him,” he says.

 

Wilson looks disappointed but not surprised. “I figured, but we thought it was worth a shot.”

 

Rogers is frowning. He asks Wilson for the phone and scrutinizes it before handing it over to Barnes. “What do you think, Buck?”

 

Barnes takes his time, making careful note of the language, the ink, the precise arrangement of the form. Evil aside, Hydra has a real distinct bureaucratic flair. “Does Maximoff trust her contact?”

 

“Not really, but she said that the lady would have no reason to lie about this.”

 

“Unless someone got to her first,” murmurs Rogers.

 

“It’s in the same style as the files I’ve collected. I’d have to see the real thing before I could say for sure.” He returns the phone to Wilson.

 

“If our Dr. Zemo isn’t the original Dr. Zemo, then who is he?” Rogers asks.

 

Wilson slings his feet up on the coffee table and leans back with a muffled grunt of discomfort. “A protégé with a complex?”

 

“Could be a relative.”

 

“Yeah, maybe. This file doesn’t say whether Zemo the First had kids or not, but even if he did, why would his original file still be active? There's something weird going on, and what chaps my ass is that our imposter Zemo was able to conceal it so well. Apart from this file right here, there’s no indication anywhere that he isn’t who he says he is.”

 

“Well, whatever he's calling himself, his papers are in order,” Rogers adds. “Natasha ran a check on him when he first surfaced, and if there were any discrepancies, she would have found them. He probably buried the leads a long time ago.”

 

“There’s always a paper trail,” Barnes says. “Always.”

 

Wilson taps his phone against his lips contemplatively. “Wanda’s still in contact with the lady -- we could call her, see if she’s willing to meet us.”

 

“You think she would?”

 

“She might. I get the impression that she was a bit like Wanda and got in over her head with Strucker.”

 

It sounds too simple to Barnes. “It could be another trap.”

 

“If that’s the case, we could use some backup,” Wilson says. “We’re getting nowhere with chasing him down. He’s always two steps ahead of us. If we could try this angle instead, we might have a fresh start. You want to tag along, Cap?”

 

“ _No_ ,” Barnes snaps.

 

Silence. Rogers twists around to face him, that worried furrow crinkling between his eyebrows. Barnes feels a half-second’s resentment for Wilson for bringing that furrow back before a spike of embarrassment digs into his throat. He’s being fucking ridiculous. It’s not like Rogers has been doing well here anyway.

 

Wilson doesn’t seem too shook up. “I’ll hang here for a few days, and you guys can think on it. Besides, we’ll need to give Wanda time to get in touch with her contact.”

 

The conversation winds down after that, and as soon as he reasonably can, Barnes retreats upstairs to regroup. He’s knows it’s strange. He’d been just fine chasing Carter’s leads with Rogers or going on the occasional raid, but rejoining Wilson and Maximoff smacks too much of going back into battle. For himself, there would be some satisfaction in taking Zemo down -- anyone on Hydra’s payroll is fair game, in his eyes -- but he isn’t sure it’s worth it this time. He’s chafing at their current restrictions, yes, but the thought of him and Rogers getting involved in this mess again is . . . distasteful, to say the least.

 

The bedroom’s cold, frost thick on the window pane. Barnes puts on a zipped sweater and retrieves his notepad and pen. He chooses a nook next to the open door and settles in to listen to Rogers and Wilson talk. Their voices are quiet, but with his hearing eavesdropping doesn’t take any particular effort.

 

“I didn’t mean to barge in here and pressure you guys into anything,” Wilson says. Dishes clink, and the smell of bergamot oil drifts up the stairs -- Rogers has made tea.

 

“You didn’t, Sam. It’s a good lead. Here.”

 

“Thanks. Look, the past few months have been hell. You know Wanda and I won’t blame you if you don’t want to come.”

 

“Give him some time to think, like you said. I have the feeling he’ll want to be out there.”

 

“That’s fair, but I wasn’t talking about Barnes. I meant _you_.”

 

The old couch springs squeal a bit, like Rogers is squirming around. “I’m fine.”

 

“Uh huh.”

 

The silence stretches out long enough to grow uncomfortable. Barnes rests his head against the thin wall and waits.

 

“I’ve been thinking about Peggy a lot.”

 

“Yeah?” Wilson prompts, real gentle.

 

“It’s . . . It felt like I was always saying goodbye to her, you know? It’s sinking in, I guess, that this time it’s . . . final.” He lets out a self-deprecating chuckle. “You’d think I would’ve realized that already. It’s been months.”

 

“Well, grief’s funny like that.” An odd note is in Wilson’s voice, one that Barnes can’t quite figure out, and he spares a second to regret not having visual contact. “Steve. Hey. Steve, what is it?”

 

There’s another weighty pause, and when Rogers finally speaks up, it sounds raw, like he’s forcing the words right out of his throat. “She would be so disappointed in me.”

 

“Steve ----”

 

“All of this happened because _I_ let it. I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t listen to anyone. Not you, or Nat or Vision or Jim, or To---not anyone, even when they tried to talk to me. I wouldn’t compromise.”

 

“Neither would they.”

 

“I let it get personal.”

 

“We all did.”

 

Rogers’s breath is coming fast. Barnes closes his eyes and turns his cheek against the cool wood.

 

“You know what?” Wilson says. “I’m sorry. I’ve got no right to tell you how you’re supposed to feel.”

 

Rogers laughs tiredly, and the blunt bitterness in it makes Barnes’s stomach ache a little. “You’re sorry? _I’m_ sorry, Sam. Can’t tell you how sorry I am for dragging you into this.”

 

“I’m old enough to make my own choices.” Wilson clears his throat and sighs. “Listen to me: you and I did what we thought was _right_. Everyone was doing what they thought was right. Sometimes no one’s in the wrong and everything still goes to shit.”

 

“I wish this hadn’t happened.”

 

“Don’t we all. But it did, and it’s okay to not be okay with it.”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

Barnes clenches his jaw and resists the impulse to put his fist through the wall. He’d done that a lot, in the beginning, and it’s never completely lost its appeal. In any case, it would cause a big enough distraction to stop the conversation in its tracks.

 

“Well, I’m not,” Wilson says bluntly. “I keep having nightmares about it. You and Riley. Jim, Wanda, Natasha. . . . People like us, it doesn’t take much to make the bad stuff come back.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Rogers murmurs.

 

“Me too.” Wilson’s voice softens. “No matter what, we’re just damn grateful you’re alive.”

 

The couch creaks again, this time accompanied by a rustle of fabric and a smattering of back slaps, and a bubble of mingled fondness and exasperation cleaves into Barnes’s anger -- they’re probably hugging again, the bleeding-hearts.

 

As if by silent agreement, the tense back-and-forth is promptly replaced by the slurping of tea and asinine observations about basketball and Maximoff’s predilection for “screamo” music on the shared car radio. Barnes zips his sweatshirt up his chin and makes a few notes. The sunlight dims and the temperature drops, but he stays put. He thinks for a while, leafing through his pad. It’s almost guaranteed that Wilson will talk to him tomorrow, and he wants to know exactly what he’s going to say.

 

****

 

His gut-feeling pays off -- Wilson approaches him the next morning while he’s having a smoke out by the road.

 

It’s only nine o’clock, but it’s already warmer now than it was at noon yesterday, and Barnes is soaking up the sunlight greedily. Wilson keeps his footfalls loud enough to give fair warning, and he comes to a stop a few discreet steps away.

 

“Hey, Barnes. Good morning.”

 

“Morning.” He takes another drag, and they both watch the vapor snake up into the air. He feels magnanimous today. The full carton’s sitting on his cot but he brought an extra smoke in his pocket, so he fishes for it and holds it out in Wilson’s direction. “You want?”

 

“Nah, I quit. Thanks, though.”

 

“Suit yourself.”

 

Wilson meanders up to the trees, peers over the shallow ridge, cranes his neck back to study the lazily-drifting clouds. “This is a beautiful place,” he says aloud. “Real damn rustic. You want to know something?”

 

Barnes shrugs.

 

“I’ve never seen an actual outhouse in my entire life. Like, never. It’s even got a little half-moon carved in the door. It’s an experience. I feel like my life has been enriched.”

 

“You can clean it out too if you want.”

 

“I don’t need that much enrichment.” Wilson grins, loose and easy. Barnes just looks at him, unamused, and he sobers up instantly.  “I’ve got something to ask you. Can I be straight with you and get a straight answer?”

 

Barnes tamps down on an automatic assurance and considers it honestly. Wilson’s helped him out of a lot of tight spots and never asked for anything in return. He owes the man a debt that he knows he can never pay off. “I’ll be straight with you.”

 

“Steve’s not getting better, is he?”

 

“No.”

 

“I didn’t think so.” Wilson squeezes the bridge of his nose and sighs. In the open sunlight, without the flattering effect of lamplight, he looks tired too -- older. “Fuck.”

 

 _In for a penny, in for a pound_. “If he tries to run for more than thirty minutes, he passes out. The incisions are healed up and there’s no scarring. The medication is keeping him level, but so far as I can tell it’s not improving a damn thing.”

 

Wilson’s expression is complicated, and it takes Barnes a few seconds to pick out all the elements: frustration, disappointment, anger, regret, and an undertow of fear. He’s quiet for a long time, and Barnes doesn’t push. “Has he tried contacting Stark?”

 

“Probably gave him a dud anyway.”

 

“No,” Wilson says firmly. “No. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pissed, but he’d never sink that low.” He takes a deep breath. “After everything, I don’t think he’d do that to Cap.”

 

In truth, the rational part of Barnes’s brain doesn’t think so either, but when it comes to this, he’s not too fussed about being rational. “I’m not going to suggest it unless it gets worse.”

 

“If it really needs maintenance. . . .”

 

“Then I’ll say something. For right now, I’m not bringing it up, and I don’t think you should either.”

 

“That’s fair,” Wilson says, after only a slight hesitation. “You know the situation better than me.” He cuts a glance over, and the sudden, unashamed kindness in his smile makes Barnes feel awkward. “Thanks for looking after him so well. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I was surprised you stayed.”

 

Hell, it surprises _him_ sometimes too -- it would be so much simpler to keep running. But the plain truth is that he doesn’t want to leave. There’s a strong instinct to protect, to stay close, a nagging voice in the dusty recesses of his brain that insists that _here is someone good, here is someone safe, here is someone who loved you_.

 

Wilson thrust his hands into his coat pockets and rocks back on his heels. “You know you don’t have to stay upstairs while Cap and I are shooting the shit, right? I don’t mind. Come sit with us tonight; I’m trying to get him to play Candy Crush with me again. He gets so mad when he loses. Trust me, it’s hilarious.”

 

Barnes eyes him. “No head-shrinking?”

 

“Still not your therapist, man. No counseling services provided here. You have my solemn word that I won’t ask you about your childhood or your nightmares or what you used to jerk off to. In fact, I’d like to be very clear right now that I have a policy of never knowing about my friends’ masturbation habits.”

 

“I can’t remember my birthday, but you think I remember what I waxed my johnson to in the forties?”

 

Wilson laughs out loud. “Unbelievable,” he says, and when the two of them finally wander back to the cabin, it’s with the unspoken understanding that they’re once again accomplices in protecting Rogers from his own fool-headed self.

 

The man himself is sitting out on the porch, reading quietly and doing a decent job of pretending he wasn’t standing by to interfere at the first hint of violence. He glances up, looks between them with a smile that’s equal parts pleasure and suspicion, and tells them that there’s breakfast on the stove if they’re done chitchatting. The afternoon’s spent in quiet pursuits -- Rogers wants to finish his book, and Wilson wants to check out the sights in Skagway and restock their pantry. Barnes decides to stay put, but he does impart a word of warning, as a courtesy.

 

“Watch out for Bradley.”

 

Wilson turns around in the doorway, patting his coat down for his wallet. Barnes sees Rogers hiding a smile behind his book. “Who’s Bradley?”

 

“The clerk. He’s a little shithead.”

 

“Alright,” Wilson says amiably, and then he goes to get groceries and comes back with two bags of M&Ms.

 

Wilson’s a good guy.

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

 


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings below

* * *

* * *

 

The Soldier bleeds when he is injured or punished, but his bones regrow, his skin mends in days, leaving nothing behind but dried blood and an ache. In a dim corner of his mind, the Soldier knows that humans do not heal like this. The fragile bodies of his targets break, and they do not regrow.

 

Time is passing. In a vague way, he is aware that the cities look different, that the people on the streets walk differently, talk differently. The shape of the world is changing, and his handlers grow old.

 

But the Soldier does not. He cannot die.

 

“You are a machine,” they say, and he believes them.

 

_Who am I?_

 

_You are no one._

 

* * *

* * *

_November 2016_

* * *

 

 

The motel is seedy. It’s not the seediest place that Barnes has ever squatted in, but the walls are thin, the carpets are dirty, and Wilson swears a blue streak when he steps on a centipede in the rust-ringed tub. Everything is wet and smells of mildew. It rains constantly.

 

Barnes hates Washington.

 

It had taken all of two days for Maximoff to reply to Wilson’s message with a confirmation that she would bring her contact for a rendezvous and another full day to pack up everything they owned. Neither of them say as much, but Barnes knows that he and Rogers won’t ever be returning to the little cabin in Skagway.

 

The trip down through Canada is judged too risky, as they’d barely scraped by border security on their way to Alaska in the first place. They can’t rely on the Quinjet this time either, and so they hitch a boat-ride down the coast, rent a car, and end up laying low in Washington state, just outside Cape Disappointment -- a goddamn apt name, in Barnes’s humble opinion.

 

Barnes checks into the shithole motel with cash and smuggles Wilson and Rogers in after dark. It makes for cramped quarters, but they’re relatively safe and it’s not as cold as witch’s tit anymore. Small mercies. Even so, Maximoff and her contact are taking their time. She’d promised an ETA of two days. It’s been four.

 

He’s getting real tired of waiting.

 

***

 

On the fifth day of their stay, Romanoff sends him an email -- it overtakes the entire screen as soon as he turns on his tablet to check the weather forecast. (It’s been raining literally all day long, without pause. The whole fucking ocean is going to dry up.)

 

_How are they?_

 

 _Functional_ , he replies.

 

When the text box pops back up, there’s a hyperlink for a C-SPAN livestream at the top, followed by a brief message:

 

 _S. making early statement before SRC at 5:00 et, Capitol Hill open forum_.

 

The feeling of pure and simple dread is instantaneous and so overwhelming that it takes him a minute to focus enough to read the next line.

 

 _Don’t let him see it_.

 

And that’s it. Barnes sits for a moment, perched on the edge of the bed. Rogers is showering, humming an off-key rendition of the Dog Cops theme song, while Wilson is stretched out across the other bed in his boxers and talking quietly on the phone with his sister. The television is off, broken antennae drooping pathetically to one side.

 

He gets up and knocks on the bathroom door. “If you can hear me over your yowling, I’m going out for a cig.”

 

“Okay.” There’s a smile in Rogers’s voice. “They’re gonna get soggy.”

 

“I’ll smoke in the car.”

 

“No you won’t,” Wilson calls. “I put a deposit down on that.”

 

“I’ll smoke in someone else’s car. Be back before dark.”

 

“Stay safe, Buck,” Rogers says.

 

Wilson twists around and offers Barnes a wave before turning back to the wall. Barnes shrugs on his jacket and hat with one hand, making as much noise as possible -- it’s child’s play to use the other hand to soundlessly prise open the back panel of the television, snap a few wires, and replace the panel. Wilson, blabbing away, doesn’t so much as glance over his shoulder.

 

Barnes slips the keys in his pocket and the tablet down into his coat and zips up. Downstairs, the chump at the front desk is the only employee on the floor, and he's busy gnawing on a plug of chew and watching a football game on a dusty old television. No security cameras -- a place like this probably can’t be bothered to buy them. It’s a stroke of luck. Infiltrating the maintenance room and disconnecting the wireless router is the work of a few seconds, and he walks right out the lobby doors without the receptionist looking up at him once.

 

Turning up his collar against the wet wind, Barnes goes to a coffee shop two streets over. The place is buzzing with a pre-dinner crowd, and no one pays him any attention as he shakes his coat off at the door. He orders a cinnamon hot chocolate and sits back in the corner before connecting his tablet to the wireless, wedging Wilson’s earbuds into his ears. He pulls up Romanoff’s email and clicks the livestream link.

 

For the first half-hour, there isn’t much to see. The C-SPAN cameras are fixed in place near the dias, with no commentary, and well-dressed men and women wander back and forth across the screen, mingling in constantly-shifting groups and talking in hushed voices. Barnes makes note of each one anyway as the table at the front of the chamber gradually fills in. Ross is one of the last council members to arrive -- he walks in with Hill, who looks focused and grim. Carter follows behind them, though she veers off to sit with the onlookers while Hill and Ross mount the platform.

 

Barnes drinks his chocolate and stares at Ross, watching as he greets his council and pours himself a glass of water. He looks uncomfortable, tired, and a vicious satisfaction settles into Barnes’s chest.

 

 _Rat bastard_.

 

At fifteen-minutes till, the barn doors are opened and the media pours in. There’s a brief commotion as they arrange themselves and their equipment in the rows of plastic chairs in front of the testimonial podium. The room gets louder, noisier. The camera pans in wide-shot over the chamber and the doors are closed by armed security.

 

There’s a flash of familiar red hair in the crowd, up on the balcony.

 

Senator Nyugen, her stern face unreadable, begins the proceedings. She pulls down her microphone, a half-dozen glittering bracelets jangling incongruously on her thin wrist, and the noise in the chamber drops like an anvil -- she’s an intimidating dame.  “Fellow senators and guests, I welcome you to the preliminary meeting of the Task Force for the Amendment of the Sokovia Accords. We will hear statements from members of the public tonight, but the docket will not be opened until the hearings begin this Tuesday afternoon. I urge all of you to attend and participate in the ensuing discussions throughout the next month, though please bear in mind that the initial findings of the Task Force will not be presented to the public until Tuesday next.” She adjusts her microphone again and looks over to Ross. “Secretary Ross, you have the floor.”

 

Ross leans forward, smoothing down his necktie. He’s managed to stuff some of his earlier unease, but there’s still an unhappy tightness around his eyes. “Thank you, Senator. As you are no doubt aware, this council has accepted into its ranks a public servant to serve as an advocate for the enhanced community, that our amendment hearings may be as fair and well-balanced as is possible.” It’s pretty fucking astounding, Barnes thinks, that Ross was able to say that with a straight face. “Ms. Hill has an announcement, and I defer the floor to her.”

 

“Thank you, Mr. Secretary,” Hill says. The camera swoops down and zooms in on her. She has a good poker face, but Barnes can see a sliver of dark amusement beneath it. “With your permission, Senators, I would call on Mr. Anthony Stark and Ms. Virginia Potts of Stark Industries to open our meeting with prepared statements.”

 

Barnes grits his teeth.

 

Onscreen, the respectful silence of the crowd is subsumed by tense, whispering anticipation -- almost as one, recording devices and cameras shift back toward the doors. Nyugen’s frown deepens at the crowd’s reaction, but she nods to Hill graciously and instructs security to bring in Stark. The doors open after a brief pause, and Stark and Potts are escorted into the chamber by a page. There’s another murmur in the crowd, and a few brassy photographers take their chance. Stark doesn’t so much as look at the flashing lights as he walks down the aisle. Potts does look at the cameras, briefly, as they pass, but she’s certainly not offering them any smiles today.

 

As they near the podium, it’s obvious that the rags are going to have a field day with their photos: Stark looks like shit. His dark suit is rumpled and his eyes are visibly bloodshot, circled by purpling rings that his concealer can’t hide. Potts’s hand lingers subtly near his elbow as they walk up to stand together. When they get there, he fumbles in his breast pocket and puts a stack of notecards in front of him before gripping the podium with both hands like it’s the only thing holding him up. He looks hungover.

 

Disgust lodges, sour, in the back of Barnes’s throat.

 

“Ms. Potts, state your name and purpose, please,” Nyugen says.

 

“Virginia Anne Potts, CEO and Executive Chair of Stark Industries, Inc. I’m here to speak on behalf of the Board of Directors of Stark Industries.” The contrast between Stark and Potts is almost laughable -- standing next to him in her crisp white suit, she looks calm, polished, and determined. “With your permission, I would like to make a brief statement. The relationship between the United States government and Stark Industries has, in the past, been cordial and mutually beneficial. I would remind the honorable council that Stark Industries has devoted significant monies and resources, as well as its fullest cooperation, to the deployment of the Sokovia Accords since the legislation’s inception.

 

“I would take this opportunity to reaffirm Stark Industries’ investment in maintaining friendly international relations and promoting security and safety worldwide. Stark Industries is now in the process of meeting with select international representatives to fund rebuilding projects necessitated by recent events involving with the enforcement of the Accords. However, it is in the best legal interests of apolitical company employees and stockholders to disengage from direct funding for the military operations used to enforce the Accords. As a consequence, Stark Industries and its affiliates will be reevaluating the parameters of its contractual obligation with the State Department.”

 

Barnes swallows his mouthful of cocoa so hastily it goes down the wrong pipe. Diplomatic double-speak aside, everyone in that chamber knows ‘reevaluating parameters’ means -- Stark Industries is neatly severing its financial ties to the council, to Ross. The cameras are still fixed on Potts, and Barnes almost crushes his cup in frustration -- he wants to see Ross’s face. It’s like punching blind, not being able to see how they’re reacting, how this is being absorbed. This is huge, and the backlash alone . . .

 

“Thank you for your time,” Potts says pleasantly.

 

It takes Nyugen a moment to respond, and when the cameras finally turn to the table again, Barnes nearly presses his nose up against the tablet. She looks taken aback but not overly rattled -- she must have had some warning. Ross looks _livid_.

 

“Thank you for your input, Ms. Potts. Mr. Stark, state your name and purpose, please.”

 

“Anthony Edward Stark, former CEO of Stark Industries, former Avenger, alias ‘Iron Man.’” Stark releases his death-grip on the podium and links his hands behind his back before swinging them forward again nervously. “I’m here to make a statement, as I’m sure you guys already gathered.”

 

“We did, Mr. Stark,” Nyugen says dryly.

 

Stark shuffles his notecards. There’s a long, awkward pause, punctuated by the occasional flashbulb.

 

“Mr. Stark,” Nyugen prompts. Next to her, the rat bastard has gotten control of himself again -- he’s staring at Stark, stone-faced, but there are still spots of red high in his cheeks.

 

Barnes swallows heavily. His heart is pounding.

 

“I have a statement,” Stark says finally. His eyes are fixed on his cards. “It is on my behalf, and my behalf only. As everyone in this room is aware, I have been a staunch supporter of the Accords and of this council. As an Avenger, I saw the casualties that we incurred while attempting to prevent worldwide disasters, and our ability to act, unsupervised and unchecked, led to loss of life and extensive property damage. I, and several of my colleagues, agreed that it was necessary and fair to regulate the activity of those who have great power in order to protect those who do not.

 

“I believed in accountability, and I still do, wholeheartedly.” Stark pauses to lick his lips. “But in the zeal to prevent tragedies like Sokovia, we forgot to respect the humanity and free will of the individuals involved. The legislation was passed without input from those most affected and without adequate protection for their families and loved ones. We violated the rights of the enhanced community to speak for themselves.”

 

Barnes can’t see the crowd, but he can sure hear them -- there’s whispering, fidgeting, the sounds of tripods and lenses being hurriedly adjusted. He’s feeling a bit wrongfooted himself, confusion wedging itself rudely into his anger.

 

“There’s been enough fighting, enough tragedy, and these amendments need to be extensive,” Stark says. “The inability to compromise on both sides bred a disaster. It cost the world an irreplaceable hero -- and a friend.” Stark hesitates again, and Barnes sees Potts reach out to discreetly brush Stark’s side. “Out of respect for Steve Rogers and as a show of good faith and compromise, I ask this honorable council to waive the arrest warrants for all members of the former Avengers.”

 

 _Christ on a cracker_.

 

Senator Nguyen holds up her hand. “I intend no offense to the memory of Captain Rogers, but may I remind you, Mr. Stark, that this is a meeting to hear public statements on the amendment of the Sokovia Accords. The issue of outstanding warrants is not on the table.”

 

“You know what? Just . . . I’m just going to talk here.” Stark stuffs his notecards back in his pocket with unsteady hands. Over his shoulder, Potts’s professional mask cracks just a tiny bit, worry peeping through -- going off script evidently wasn’t the plan. “Look, I’m not asking you to toss the Accords out the window. I’m asking you to grant leniency to show that the government is willing to _work_ with those they want to regulate. The Accords, as they stand, were rushed through without time for a proper investigation, without time for collaboration between two groups of well-intentioned people. I’m asking you to have the decency to not treat the heroes of the Battle of New York like common criminals.”

 

“They are being treated like criminals because they have violated the _law_ ,” Ross says coldly. “A law that was explained to them in full, and which they deliberately refused to respect.”

 

Stark doesn’t spare him a glance -- he’s looking at Nyugen, at the other council members. “The Accords are flawed. They are deeply flawed, and they were implemented unfairly. People were being press-ganged and then arrested when they exercised their right to protest.”

 

Nyugen’s eyebrows are nearing her hairline. “Mr. Stark, Mr. Secretary, this is not the time or the place for this debate.”

 

“Press-ganged?” Ross repeats incredulously. “You’re singing a different tune, Mr. Stark.”

 

“Of course I am. I’ve seen the results of the Accords firsthand now.”

 

“Those Accords were put in place because of _your_ actions.”

 

“I know that. If any of us needed regulation, I did. What happened in Sokovia was the direct result of actions I took. I’m not denying that.”

 

“If you feel so strongly about it, perhaps you should be behind bars yourself.”

 

“Mr. Secretary----”

 

“I’m pretty sure you said you weren’t interested in putting me behind bars. I can dig up the quote, if you want.”

 

“And you were eager to make deals too, Stark,” Ross spits. He’s leaning so close to his microphone that he’s practically swallowing it, veins in his forehead bulging. It’s almost shocking, how upset he looks -- throughout this whole debacle he’s been nothing but calm, cool, and infuriatingly rational. God, what the hell has been _happening_ out there? He’s unraveling right in front of the press.

 

“Oh, I’m sorry -- I think you’ve forgotten that you approached me. Don’t worry, it happens when you get older.”

 

There are titters from the crowd.

 

“Mr. Stark, that is enough,” Nyugen barks. “If you cannot be respectful, you will be asked to leave. Mr. Secretary, please stop this line of questioning----”

 

Ross bowls right over her, hands fisted on the table. “You were the first one in line to sign those Accords!”

 

“I won’t pretend that I wasn’t!” Stark twists around to cast a look over the audience, gripping the podium. “I did what I thought was right. I did what I thought would protect people. I did what I thought would stop people from _dying_.” He turns back to the council. “I enforced the law, flaws and all, by any means necessary, and I can tell you that it wasn’t. . . it wasn’t worth it.” Stark’s voice cracks. He stares down at the podium for a moment and then turns heel and leaves so suddenly that the press is motionless and Potts is left standing alone, visibly disturbed.

 

It takes a solid minute for Stark’s exit to sink in with the crowd. Ross is silent, jaw clenched, and the other council members look too flustered to call anything to order. Potts steps back from the stand, blank-faced; almost as one, the press seem to realize that their moneymaker has just run out the door. They’re up out of their chairs like their asses are collectively on fire, and the herd of upraised microphones and shouting voices stampedes out into the lobby.

 

Barnes turns off the tablet.

 

***

 

When Barnes gets back to the motel, the room is still and dark, the lights dimmed. On the closest bed, Rogers is sitting propped against the headboard and reading a book. His hair’s dried into little blond cowlicks all over his head, and Barnes has the oddest impulse to spit in his palm and smooth them down. He drops his keys and gun on the bedside table. “Hey.”

 

“Hey,” Rogers murmurs. Next to him, Wilson is lying on his stomach with the covers up to his neck, snoring like a buzzsaw.

 

Barnes glances over at the old alarm clock on the bedside table. 11:10. He’s been gone for over five hours -- a bit longer than a smoke break. No one’s going to demand an explanation, like he’s some snot-nosed kid with a curfew, but he feels guilty anyway. Rogers worries.

 

“I bought cocoa and went on a walk,” he says, dropping his coat across the nearest chair. “Needed to clear my head.”

 

Rogers hums and turns a page. “Was the cocoa good?”

 

It’s still unbalancing, feeling that swelling of fondness that roots in his stomach and spreads lingering warmth up into his chest. Better than gas, anyway. “It was okay. Too sweet.”

 

“Did you enjoy the walk?”

 

He’s fairly sure he went in circles out in the woods -- he hadn’t been interested in seeing the sights. He’d mostly been trying not to punch down a few trees in a mindless rage. “Yeah.”

 

“What did you think of the hearing?”

 

“Fuck.” He sits down on the bed and scrubs his face. “What tipped you off?”

 

Rogers is still smiling, but there’s enough disappointment in it to feel like a roundhouse kick. “Kind of funny that the tv stops working and the internet goes out as soon as you leave.”

 

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

 

They’re both silent, waiting for the other to crack. Barnes toes off his boots. The two women in the room below theirs are shouting about cab fares -- angry or drunk or both. There’s a car revving in the parking lot outside. Their transmission sounds shot. Rogers puts his book down with enough force that Wilson stirs a little.

 

“I don’t know why everyone thinks I don’t know how to use Google alerts. This hearing wasn’t a secret.”

 

“I didn’t want you to see it.”

 

“Bucky, that’s not your choice to make.”

 

Rogers is being ridiculous. “You can’t even talk about him, but you want to watch him give a speech about your death on live television?” Barnes asks. “That’s how you want to start over, by flinging yourself in head-first?”

 

“Maybe I do.”

 

No sense. No goddamn sense _at all_. “Look, he made nice at the last minute, but I don’t trust him not to turn his back the second it’ll save him a buck. Unless you’re itching for a repeat of what happened the last time we were all in a room together.”

 

“Again,” Rogers says tightly, “not your call.”

 

The hot cocoa’s sitting pretty heavy in his gut now. “You want to talk about making calls, how about we sit and listen to that thing ticking in your chest? ‘Cause somebody put it there, and it sure as hell wasn’t me or you.”

 

Rogers tenses, telegraphing hurt and annoyance everywhere. Barnes feels his body respond in kind but he makes himself stay put. There’s no danger. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Rogers snaps.

 

“Good. Then I’ll go to sleep, and we can both shut up.” Barnes stands up and yanks back the covers on the other bed. He pulls his shirt off and throws it the corner. He drops his pants. His belt buckle hits the floor with a loud clank.

 

“You’re going to wake Sam,” Rogers says, snottily. Barnes considers mooning him for a whole half-second before he kicks his jeans away and crawls under the covers.

 

“You guys gonna start punching?” Wilson mumbles sleepily, his face still buried in the pillow. “If you’re gonna start punching, go do it outside. I ain’t getting punched.”

 

Rogers sighs. “No punching.”

 

“Speak for yourself,” Barnes mutters.

 

Wilson promptly starts snoring again.

 

They stew for a bit in mutual irritation. Rogers picks up his book again, but he clearly isn’t reading it. Barnes fusses miserably with his blankets and shifts on the lumpy mattress and spares a moment to wish they were back in Alaska. At least in the cabin no one had bothered them -- there was no one but him and Rogers and that stupid gnome statue, and they’d been _safe_.

 

Rogers turns abruptly and glares at him from over his book. “Did Natasha send you the tip, or were you monitoring it?”

 

“She sent it.”

 

“She sent it to me too.”

 

Barnes stares up at the ceiling and acknowledges with equal parts bitterness and grudging respect that he’s been outfoxed by Romanoff _again_. “She wanted to see if I would lie to you.” He lets his head drop back against the wall. “Guess I failed her test.”

 

“No, I’m pretty sure you passed it,” Rogers says dryly. “Between the two of you, you’d keep me in a playpen if you could.”

 

“Would it work?”

 

At first Rogers is puffing up, like he’s getting ready to unleash hell, but then he pulls the rug out from under Barnes’s feet by deflating like a flat tire. “I understand why you did it. Just . . . I’ve had enough people trying to protect me by not telling me things to last me a lifetime. I don’t want to be protected if it means I’m going to be lied to by my friends.”

 

“Not pulling any punches tonight, are you?”

 

“It’s the truth.”

 

Barnes doesn’t know why he says it. He doesn’t mean to -- it just slips out. “Every time I look at him, I see Howard.”

 

“Buck,” Rogers says, pained, and then he trails off, like he doesn’t know what to say either.

 

And honestly, what is there to say? He doesn’t remember killing Howard and Maria. There’s no doubt that he’d been deployed to shoot the tires out of their car, but he doesn’t have any personal proof to back it up. There’s nothing but a yawning blank spot in his mind, the gaps filled in by photographs from the scene and news reports. In some ways, it’s almost worse. He’d murdered them -- the least he could do is have the decency to remember doing it.

 

“He was right to go after me,” Barnes tells him. “You want to make nice with him, I can’t stop you. But going after you like he did, the way he did . . . I’m not going to forgive him for that. It’s off the table.”

 

Rogers sits up, swings his legs over the side of the bed, and Barnes braces himself instinctively. Rogers doesn’t get to his feet, though -- he leans forward, elbows propped on his knees, his face earnest and open. “I don’t want to make contact,” he says emphatically. “I watched it because I want to know what’s going on with the SRC.” He takes a breath and rolls his shoulders. “To be frank, I couldn’t finish it. Sam had to shut if off.”

 

“You weren’t ready for it.”

 

“That doesn’t matter. You guys can’t keep sticking my head in the sand.” Crossing his arms, he tucks his hands into his armpits, like he’s trying to fold over and make himself smaller. “Do you remember that kid who lived across the street from your folks’ place? Willie Greene?”

 

The name doesn’t ring a bell, but Barnes is struck by a fleeting image of a freckled nose and mean, beady gray eyes. He shakes his head.

 

“He used to beat on us. Well, he mostly beat on me, and you usually shoved your face into the fight too. He was pretty harmless most of the time, good for a busted lip but not much worse. But one day he said something. He said that my dad hadn’t died in the War -- he said that he’d probably left Ma and gone upstate somewhere with a new gal just so he wouldn’t have to have a cripple for a kid. Probably had a whole other family somewhere.” His lips twist, like it still stings a bit to say it out loud. “And I just saw _red_ , Buck. I’d never been so angry in all my life. I couldn’t think. I hit him and hit him, and you kept trying to pull me back, and I elbowed you in the chin and you bit your tongue. You were bleeding all over and I was still trying to get in another swing at Willie. Worked myself up so much that I had an asthma attack, right there in the street.”

 

Barnes blinks, trying to call up a scrap or two, but nothing’s there. “I don’t remember that.”

 

Rogers is still. “I’m glad you don’t.” He closes his eyes, the shadows of his eyelashes cutting down onto his cheeks. “It’s like that -- when I think about T----about what happened. I feel like that. I see _red_.”

 

“Rogers . . . “

 

“I can’t do that. I can’t let it get to me.” His mouth is a stubborn line. “I don’t ever want to be blindsided the way I was again. We watch each other’s backs, Buck, but I can’t watch yours or my own if I don’t know what’s going on.”

 

A logical point. Playing it a bit dirty, but logical. “Alright, that’s fair. I’m not sorry that I did it for the reasons I did, but I am sorry that I did it. You know what I mean?”

 

“I think so.”

 

“Sorry,” he says again. He pulls the blankets up to his shoulders, and Rogers slips back under the covers, sitting back against the headboard. “I know you don’t like to fight.”

 

Surprisingly, Rogers snorts.

 

“What?”

 

“Don’t let this get to your head, but I like that we fight sometimes. You always told me what was what when I was being a blockhead, and I told you too. It kept us honest. I guess it. . . .it meant that we cared about what happened to each other.” He’s silent for a long minute. “You wouldn’t fight with me, at first. I understand why, I do. I’m glad that it’s different now.”

 

It makes sense. Fighting is familiar too, in it’s own way, like they’ve always scrabbled at each other to let off some steam, secure in the knowledge that neither would take it too far. It’s safe to fight. Rogers wouldn’t hurt him. “Wilson would probably say that’s fucked up.”

 

Rogers laughs a little, soft. “Probably. But it’s us.”

 

 _It’s us._ “I suppose it is.”

 

***

 

At three in the morning, Maximoff shows up.

 

Sleeping on the bed closest to the window, it’s Barnes who wakes up first to the sight of red light filtering through the window blinds -- it looks enough like a sniper dot that he’s up and across the room with his biggest rifle on his shoulder before Rogers and Wilson can even roll over.

 

“Buck, what is it?” Rogers says, voice thick with sleep but alert.

 

He lifts one slat with a cautious finger while Rogers and Wilson crawl out of bed behind him; a safety clicks as they flank him with weapons drawn. He puts his eye up against the slot and looks north. Up in the sky, a small figure is streaking over the treeline toward them, dipping unsteadily, red light flaring and then fading. “It’s Maximoff.”

 

Wilson immediately peels open the blinds. “What the hell is she doing?” he says, disbelieving. “Someone will see her!”

 

He and Rogers run outside while Barnes keeps watch at the window. Maximoff drops the last few feet, barely clearing a parked car, and lands hard on her hands and knees on the asphalt. Rogers scoops her up and all three somehow manage to get inside before the first light switches on downstairs. A few seconds later, the door opens and Rogers hustles inside while Wilson locks it firmly behind them. Barnes takes his rifle off his shoulder but stays in position by the window as Maximoff is led to a bed.

 

Maximoff looks shaken, her bloodshot eyes limned in red. There’s an ugly, gaping gash along her hairline, dripping over her ear. Her clothes are stained with dirt, and one sleeve is hanging on by the threads.

 

“Sorry,” she gasps, her shoulders trembling. Her fingers are still glowing red, shooting off thin tongues of flame. “Sorry, I should not have come. It was foolish.”

 

“Wanda, it’s okay.” Rogers squats down next to her and cups her elbow in his palm, giving it a bracing squeeze. “Is anyone following you?”

 

She shakes her head and then winces when the movement pulls against her wound.

 

“Good, that’s good,” Rogers says softly. “We’re just glad you’re okay. It’s alright.”

 

Wilson tips her chin, probing the cut with careful fingers. “It’s still bleeding,” he murmurs. “Might need stitches, Wanda. Hey, man, can you get a damp washcloth and my bag? We need to clean this out.”

 

Barnes keeps his lookout while Rogers grabs the cloth and Wilson’s first-aid kit. Maximoff sits silently while Wilson cleans it out with alcohol and preps for a few field stitches, breathing deliberately and clearly trying to get a hold of herself. Eventually, her palms stop sparking, and she closes her eyes and inhales deeply.

 

“My contact . . . Katja is dead.”

 

Rogers’s attention flicks toward Barnes, and they share a silent moment of resigned disappointment. It’s not terribly surprising. Everyone knows what happens to defectors.

 

“Someone got wind of the meeting,” Barnes concludes.

 

Maximoff’s eyes flash up to his, widening, like she hadn’t even realized he was there. She swallows and her hands fist in her lap. “ _No_. No, it was not. . . fresh. She was --- her body was ---” She stops short and gags. Wilson’s other hand falls to her back and starts rubbing gently, soothing.

 

“I’m sorry about Katja,” Rogers says quietly. He offers his hand and Maximoff immediately takes it. “Can you tell us what happened?”

 

“A trap,” she says, the numbness in her voice underpinned with the beginnings of anger. “It was a trap. They must have been watching her house. They must have sent me the messages. I came a day early -- they could not have been ready, because they only came after I found her. Yet it happened so fast that I almost could not stop them.” She twists to look up at Wilson, who pauses with the needle halfway through her skin. “They had explosives, Sam, and assault rifles. They were trying to kill, not capture.”

 

Barnes can tell from the tight curve of Rogers’s back that he’s furious. “How many of them were there?” Rogers asks her.

 

Maximoff hesitates. “A dozen. Perhaps more. I did not recognize any of them. They were all plainclothes -- I cannot say if they were Hydra. I was able to raise my shields and put them down, but I was afraid that more would come. I ran.” She starts to hide her face in her hands, but Wilson hastily stops her from touching her forehead. “I am so sorry.”

 

“You put them down?” Barnes repeats. Rogers glances over at him again, eyebrows raised and mouth twisted in a warning frown.

 

Maximoff’s shoulders quiver. “I. . . I was afraid. I could not control it, and I let go, and they. . . fell. I do not know. I do not know if I --- I am _sorry_.”

 

“They were trying to kill you, Wanda,” Wilson says firmly. “You did what you had to do to protect yourself and get out of there.”

 

She nods and falls silent while Wilson finishes putting in the stitches.

 

“Was there anything at the house? Did you get any other message, or see anything that was out of place?”

 

“Cap, c’mon, give her a second . . . .”

 

Maximoff’s eyebrows furrow. “I do not need to be coddled. I can tell you what I know.” But she looks anxious too, shifting in place, restlessly scanning the room. Her eyes keep flicking back toward Barnes, and he realizes then that he’s the problem. “I’ll be outside,” he says, and he trades out his rifle for a small handgun and beats a rapid retreat.

 

Rogers follows him out into the hallway. “Bucky, wait.”

 

“She doesn’t trust me,” Barnes says. “She’s a smart kid not to. You and Wilson can talk to her, and for god’s sake, get back inside before someone sees you.”

 

Rogers shoots him an unhappy look but he does go back in.

 

Barnes dawdles around the dark parking lot for a while before perching up on the trunk of their car. At least it’s not raining. It’s almost peaceful, in fact, the cloud-cover dimming the stars to blurry, soft lights. Wilson comes out after a half-hour or so with a hood drawn tight over his head, looking troubled. He hops up to sit on the trunk of the car next to Barnes. “Katja’s probably been dead for a couple of weeks,” he says. “The way Wanda describes it, it sounds like electrocution. There were scorch marks on the floor and her skin was burned. Whoever killed her didn’t even bother moving her body or cleaning up.”

 

The hair lifts on the back of Barnes’s neck.

 

Wilson leans back against the windshield, hands pillowed behind his head. “You know, my mom raised me to have faith in people. I like to think that the world’s a good place, that most people really are good at heart.” He sighs. “But, man, sometimes the world makes it real hard to believe that.”

 

Barnes stares up at the stars. “Someone’s going to need to do clean up.”

 

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to go back there.”

 

“There still might be useful information in the house, and the bodies have to be taken care of soon unless you want the police added into this mess.”

 

“I’d rather they didn’t. I don’t need another broken rib.”

 

“I’ll do it,” Barnes says. He starts to slide off the trunk, but Wilson carefully snags his sleeve.

 

“Hold up. You don’t want to go in there alone, especially if there’s still someone monitoring the house.”

 

“And who I am gonna take with me? Rogers can’t be seen. We took enough risks just coming here. Do you want to make the kid go back and get rid of her friend’s body? And that’s not even counting all the people she killed there.”

 

Wilson winces. “Of course not. But I could go.”

 

“And leave Maximoff and Rogers alone? If they tracked Maximoff to the house, they can track her here. We both know Rogers is running at half-tank right now, and Maximoff’s rattled. Besides, you’re not trained for this kind of operation so you’d only get in the way. You’re not subtle and you’d slow me down.”

 

“You sure know how to make a guy feel special.”

 

“Better than dead.”

 

Wilson breathes loudly through his nose and rubs his forehead. “Fine. But you fight it out with Steve, man. I’m staying out of it.”

 

***

 

Barnes leaves at first light, loading up on gas and coffee before taking off. He’s brought his best tac gear and trustiest weapons. There’s no point in taking unnecessary risks.

 

The drive is uneventful, with no signs of surveillance; Maximoff’s directions are simple, and he finds Katja’s place without trouble -- which is probably a good indication of how they’d taken her out so easily. The house is a swanky two-story bungalow about seventy miles out from the Cape, nestled in a patch of forest. There’s a brand-new Bugatti in the garage and a top-of-the-line security system; whatever the lady had done for Hydra, it’d made her a pretty penny. The interior turns out to be just as classy, with white carpets and glossy tile and slinky leather furniture. It’s so well-kept and clean that the carnage upstairs is almost comical.

 

There are bodies everywhere, lying slumped across chairs or spread-eagled on the carpet. The whole floor stinks like death, and a swarm of flies have already managed to worm their way inside. There’s very little blood, but the stiffening corpses are definitely dead -- Barnes turns them all over, just to be sure. Eleven, by his count, both men and women of varying ages. Death was instantaneous, if the looks of frozen shock are any good indication. There are no identification cards on the bodies and no familiar faces, but he guesses Hydra.

 

Maximoff’s friend is in the upstairs bedroom, lying on her back on the floor. Her sunken eyes are looking up at the ceiling and her stomach is grossly distended, the flesh of her face starting to peel back around the mouth and nose. Maximoff was right -- probably dead for about twelve days, give or take.

 

No signs of a struggle. Her painted nails aren’t chipped or broken, and although it’s difficult to tell with the rotting, there isn’t any significant bruising. Like Maximoff said, there are veined burns up and down her arms and the surrounding carpet is charred black; it’s consistent with electrocution, though he doesn’t see any outlets or wires nearby. Barnes hesitates for a moment before lifting the body up, ignoring the unpleasant springy waxiness of her skin and the slickness of the fluids underneath her that had soaked into the carpet. He sets her down on the bed and crosses her arms over her chest before going to look through the rest of the house.

 

There’s a very meticulous order to the place, speaking of an overly organized and analytical mind, and there are few personal or sentimental items. No knick-knacks. No pictures. No art. Everything is sparse and practical, and the furniture looks like it’s brand-new off the showroom floor.

 

In the office he finds labeled shelves of scientific journals and published papers, marked up with little colored tabs and highlighter. It seems to be mostly about gene therapy, with several well-thumbed volumes of a textbook on neurology piled atop the desk.

 

She was a scientist. Barnes pushes down a visceral shudder of revulsion and forces himself to keep looking. There’s a broken cabinet next to the desk that’s been forced open and emptied out completely. It probably contained her own research, and no doubt whoever killed her already cleared out all the valuable stuff. Still, one wooden cabinet doesn’t seem like the best place to store research notes, especially in a house that apparently needed a ten-thousand dollar security system.

 

He picks up one of the textbooks and promptly drops it on the floor. It takes him a moment to realize he’s done it, and he looks down at his arm as he bends to pick it up. He swivels his wrist with no trouble, makes a fist without a hitch. Huh.

 

“Behave,” he says to his arm, grimacing at himself as soon as he says it. _Jesus, Barnes, your nut is cracked_.

 

He leaves the office and scours every inch of the main floor. He pokes in corners, looks under chairs and behind wall sconces and under cushions, and within ten minutes he strikes gold. In the northwest corner of the kitchen, there’s a slightly discolored panel in the ceiling. A little persuasive maneuvering pops it right out, and he reaches in and pulls out a ziploc bag.

 

There are only two things inside: a framed photograph and a silver flash-drive.

 

The photo is of an older woman, her hair white and braided (like Becca’s) holding a little towheaded toddler on her lap. He has an ice cream cone clenched in one chubby hand and chocolate smeared around his beaming mouth. His hair is the same color as Katja’s.

 

He pockets the flash-drive and goes back upstairs to take care of the clean-up. He leaves the bodies where they fell in the main room, but he does one more cursory sweep of the bedroom. Satisfied that there’s nothing left to find, he closes up the windows and gathers his things to leave. After a brief hesitation, he gently tucks the photo of the old woman and the boy under Katja’s swollen hands.

 

The implosion devices barely make a sound as they detonate.

 

***

 

Rogers, unsurprisingly, is waiting for him when he gets back to the motel. As soon as he opens the door, Rogers is up off his chair, worried and trying not to show it.

 

“It’s taken care of,” Barnes says, before he can ask. He shuts the door and locks it. “And I’m not injured.”

 

“Good, good. Find anything?”

 

Barnes tosses him the flash-drive. “She was hiding this.”

 

Rogers turns it over in his hands and clicks out the USB tab. “I guess we’ll see why.”

 

“It might have copies of her research. Someone already ransacked her office. I can’t say for certain what they took, but my guess is that it had to do with whatever she used to do for them.”

 

Rogers smooths his thumb over the drive. “Any clue as to who might have sent those messages to Wanda?”

 

“No cell phone or laptop that I could find. They probably took those too.”

 

“Of course they did.” Rogers goes to sit down on the bed, and only then does Barnes realize that the room’s empty.

 

“Where are the others?”

 

“They went to get us lunch.” Barnes’s stomach growls, and Rogers smiles. “We can check this out once they get back.” He puts the flash-drive on the bedside table.

 

When Maximoff and Wilson come back with a bag full of sandwiches, they gather around the tiny table to eat while Wilson copies the files from the flash-drive over onto his tablet. Strangely, there are no passwords or security measures implanted on the drive, but Wilson assures them that Romanoff’s specialized malware-program will contain any bugs.

 

The amount of data is staggering. Wilson whistles under his breath as he scrolls through the list of folders. “Wow. We’ve got to send this stuff to Natasha -- she’d have a field day with it. Look at this: lab results, test subjects, financial statements . . . .”

 

“What about personnel files? She said she was willing to give you more information about Zemo,” Rogers says. “Sam, can you do a search for him? She might have put some files on there too.”

 

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Barnes says around a mouthful of avocado. “We don’t know for sure whether she was the one who actually sent that.”

 

“I’m pulling up results for Zemo,” Wilson says. He scans for a minute, clicking furiously, and then frowns. “It’s mostly just his name, signing off on her reports.” He taps a few more times. “Thank god for translation apps -- this is all in German.”

 

“So Katja worked directly with him,” Rogers murmurs. “That’s a start.”

 

Barnes has just finished his third sandwich when Wilson makes a noise of muffled excitement. “Hey, I think I found something. This report’s got two Zemos: Dr. Heinrich, and a guy named Helmut. Helmut’s birthdate is listed as 1956, in Leipzig. The doctor's kid, maybe?”

 

“Maybe,” Barnes says. His throat is dry. “Hey, Rogers, you want to throw me a drink while you’re up?”

 

Rogers opens the shopping bag again and tosses Barnes a bottle of Gatorade. It’s the blue kind. He likes the blue kind, and he cracks it open eagerly. “Thanks. Is there a photo in there?”

 

“No photos that I can see,” Wilson replies. “But he can’t be our Zemo -- he’d be in his sixties now. Our guy’s maybe forty, tops.”

 

“This Helmut may have had a son.” Maximoff snags a tissue to wipe a blot of mustard off her blouse, frowning thoughtfully. “They look alike. And if his father and grandfather were involved in Hydra, it is very likely that he would be as well.”

 

“Oh my god,” Wilson says suddenly, sounding appalled.

 

“What? What’s wrong?” Rogers darts back across the room to the table and Maximoff stops chewing mid-bite, her eyes wide. Barnes leans in, craning to look over his shoulder -- there’s a scanned lab report on the screen.

 

“‘Lab Test AC-3-1956, aka Project Zipline,’” Wilson reads aloud. “Test subject Helmut R. Zemo. Age 21, Clearance Level 5. Lead project scientists, Dr. Heinrich L. Zemo and Dr. Katja Bern, Clearance Level 10.” He scrolls down quickly, the screen blurring. “Look at this. Look at the summary: ‘Tests marginally successful, with test subject expiring of thrombotic stroke after forty-one hours. Results inconclusive.’ Fuck, he experimented on his own kid.”

 

“And killed him,” Rogers says grimly.

 

Maximoff murmurs something under her breath and crosses herself.

 

“The rest of the pages are redacted,” Wilson says. “Damn it, of course they are.”

 

“Project Zipline,” Barnes repeats. There’s no echo in his head when he says it, like there sometimes is when something is familiar but forgotten -- a little imprint of memory with no context. “Project Zipline.”

 

“You recognize it?” Rogers asks hopefully.

 

“No,” Barnes admits. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

 

“Wanda?”

 

She shakes her head. “Nothing. They never talked to Pietro and I about their other work. We were Project Epoch.”

 

“It’s okay,” Rogers says. “At least we’ve got a start, and Natasha or Sharon might have something to add. Do you still have that burner phone, Sam? We should give Nat a call. I need to talk to her anyway.”

 

“It’s in the car,” Wilson says. “I’ll go get it.”

 

“I’ll go with you.” Rogers is already toeing on his shoes, and after a hesitation Wilson gets his keys. Barnes doesn’t protest. The parking lot isn’t very busy, and they all know that Rogers is going stir-crazy. A walk out to the car isn’t unacceptably dangerous. As soon as they leave, however, a disadvantage presents itself: their departure leaves him alone with Maximoff.

 

It isn’t that it’s awkward, necessarily -- over the years, the awkwardness has been all but beaten out of him. Still, Maximoff is obviously uncomfortable, and there’s very little he can do about it. He stuffs another sandwich in his face to have something to occupy himself with, and Maximoff scrolls through the tablet. Ten minutes tick by. Barnes goes to the window and checks on them -- they’re sitting in the car and Rogers is holding the phone. He distracts himself for a few seconds trying to lipread, but he doesn’t get much more than ‘Nat’ and ‘frustrating’ and ‘invalid’ before Maximoff speaks up.

 

“I want to thank you,” she says, and he twists around to look at her.

 

“Uh.” _Well said, pal_.

 

“Steve trusts you.” The way she says it in her heavy accent -- _Steef -_ \- almost makes him want to smile. “Sam also. We have fought at each other’s sides, and you have given me no reason to distrust you. Thank you for seeing to Katja.”

 

He has to admit, the kid’s caught him off-guard. It takes him a minute to find a reply. “Not a problem. I’m . . . sorry about your friend.”

 

“I did not know her well,” Maximoff admits. “She worked in Strucker’s lab and ran tests on me. But she was kinder to me than the others were. They kept Pietro and I separated always, but she allowed us to sit together before our tests. I will never forget.” She looks down at her feet. “I suppose that is silly.”

 

Barnes thinks of the first time he was given food at a shelter. It had taken weeks for him to believe that he wasn’t going to be used in return for those hot dinners, that there wasn’t some hidden price tag. Hydra tended to burn the empathy out of a person real quick. “Small kindnesses seem big when there’s not a lot to go around,” he says finally.

 

“Perhaps,” she replies, gloomy-faced.

 

Barnes peers back out the window. Rogers is laughing, covering his eyes with one hand -- no doubt Romanoff has already secured his forgiveness, his wounded pride easily soothed. It tugs something inside him. “I was too hard on you,” he says. “When I told you to get out of my head . . . . I know now that you meant well. You were trying to protect them.”

 

He hears Maximoff stand up. She drifts closer but is careful to keep some distance. “It is forgotten. You had undergone a great violation, and I should not have pressed you.”

 

“You shouldn’t have,” he says, “but I’m not exactly standing on the high ground either. I get what you were doing, is what I’m trying to say, and I’m not still sore at you for it.”

 

She nods at him graciously, he nods back, and they wait patiently at the window for Wilson and Rogers to come back.

 

***

 

That night, they end up eating dinner outside after Wilson discovers a half-broken picnic table set back in the trees, far enough from the main stretch that the foot traffic is all but nonexistent. Rogers sits silently in the grass and soaks in the fading sunlight, his head tilted toward the sky. Maximoff and Wilson look like it’s doing them some good too -- they argue good-naturedly about whether they should take a detour to hook up with Carter for information first or whether they ought to forward the flash-drive’s databanks straight to Hill instead.

 

Barnes has no horse in that race, so he leans back against the table and watches the sun set.

 

The temperature drops rapidly once the sky darkens, and eventually the day’s excitement seems to be making its mark. Rogers is looking pale and tired, and Wilson manages to prod him back upstairs to get some rest without much protest at all. Barnes follows after another hour, leaving Maximoff and Wilson to their idle planning.

 

He slips into the room quietly -- the lights are off and Rogers is sleeping, settled on his back with his breath coming slow and easy. Barnes gets a change of underwear and goes into the bathroom.

 

The shower stall smells strongly of Rogers’s shampoo, with an underlying musk of clean skin and sex. He’s lived with Rogers long enough to recognize that scent, but it takes him a minute to realize that he’s standing in the stall and inhaling like a freak, his cock chubbing up. _Fuck_. He turns on a burst of cold water and scrubs his hair furiously, ignoring everything but efficiently getting clean, and gets out of the tub the instant he’s done.

 

He mills around uncertainly for a bit, drying his hair and wondering where he’s going to sleep. Maximoff will probably want to share a bed with Wilson, and he’s gotten spoiled himself, now used to sleeping on things other than hard floors or grimy blankets.

 

Rogers solves the quandary for him. “Get in,” he murmurs as Barnes starts his twentieth lap of the room. He lifts the covers with one hand, and Barnes slips in next to him in a blink.

 

It’s toasty as a furnace under the comforter, the whole bed warmed up by Rogers’s ridiculous body heat, and Barnes lets himself lay back and enjoy it for a full minute before sitting up to put his Colt .45 in its customary sleeping position between the mattress and the headboard.  

 

“Y’okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Barnes says, and he pulls off his socks with his toes, kicking them onto the carpet. “Why?”

 

“Mmm. I dunno,” Rogers slurs, half-asleep. “You’ve been soundin’ diff’rent lately. Talking diff’rent.”

 

Huh. “Didn’t notice.”

 

“It’s nice. Makes you sound like you.”

 

It’s like a bucket of icy water. He lays down flat on his back and stares up at the ceiling, suddenly wishing that he’d chosen the fucking floor.

 

Even half out-of-it, Rogers seems to realize he’s put his foot in it. “Oh, Buck,” he mumbles, “’s not what I meant. You’re always you.” He sits up suddenly, rubbing at his eyes, obviously trying to wake himself up.

 

“Christ, go back to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

 

“No,” Rogers says stubbornly. He takes a breath, yawns, and reaches over for the bottle of water, taking deep gulps until his eyes are a little clearer. “That’s not what I meant at all. I just meant that you seem more . . . .”

 

“Sane?” Barnes grunts.

 

“Annoying,” Rogers says. He smiles at Barnes, and there's so much naked affection there that it's hard to look at. “You’ve always had a mouth on you. It’s just nice to hear it again. I missed it. I missed you.”

 

Barnes’s chest _hurts_. “I’m not him.”

 

“You are in all the ways that count.”

 

“He’s dead. He’s gone.”

 

There’s a flash of pain in Rogers’s eyes -- an old grief, tired and worn through. “I know,” he says. “I know he is.” Rogers lays back down on his stomach, mirroring Barnes’ pose. He reaches out between them, his palm held out, fingers extended. “But the truth is, that kid from Brooklyn who was too stupid to back down from a fight? He didn’t make it out either. Both of those boys, they’re gone.”

 

Out of nowhere, Barnes’s eyes start to sting. He glances down at Rogers’s hand, propped on the mattress with no expectations, no demand. Just . . . waiting. “So what’s left?”

 

“Us,” Rogers says. “We’re still here.”

 

Barnes takes his hand. His skin is so warm, his grip strong and firm and soft all at once. He squeezes, and Rogers squeezes back.

 

“Can I call you Steve?”

 

Rogers looks at him, wide-eyed, and when he speaks, that cautious note is back in his voice. Barnes hates it. “Of course you can. I thought you didn't want to. Did I make you feel like you couldn’t?” He pauses. “Is it okay that I call you Bucky?”

 

He almost laughs, despite himself. “Yes.”

 

“If that’s okay, why wouldn’t you be able to call me Steve?”

 

Barnes doesn’t have any answer for him. It’s all tied up in his brain, like most everything else. Names are important. They mean something. ‘Steve’ is the little guy from Before, the guy the Bucky Barnes inside his head loved so much. It hadn’t felt right using that name without permission, but he hadn’t known how to ask until now. “I don’t know.”

 

“Alright.” He stretches with another jaw-cracking yawn. “I’d like it if you called me Steve, but you can call me anything.”

 

“Anything?”

 

Steve grins into the pillow. “Within reason.”

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: implied violence and graphic description of a crime scene.


	4. Part Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings in end notes.

* * *

**PART FOUR**

* * *

* * *

 

 

“. . . In this post-9/11, post-Invasion world, the American public has accepted a certain amount of regulation in exchange for safety. Our waits at the airport are longer, our children march through metal detectors and security staff to get to their classrooms, our movements are observed and recorded through the lenses of thousands of cameras.

If average, everyday citizens can accept these infringements on their personal privacy for the greater good, why then is the idea of regulating and registering ‘enhanced’ individuals like the Avengers a matter of such intense debate? If the recent, nationwide controversy surrounding police misconduct has taught us anything, it is that peacekeeping forces need _more_ direct oversight, not less. . . .”

 

“. . . Perhaps it is unjust to say that the Avengers are to blame for the recent incident in Lagos, Nigeria. They were not responsible for planting the explosives, and the triggering of the bombs was, by all accounts, entirely an accident. However, one wonders whether it was necessary to stage such a confrontation in a crowded market, in full view of vulnerable, unprotected citizens. . . .  Evidently, the Nigerian government was not even made aware of the Avengers’ presence in their country --  by no means the only case in which local governments were unpleasantly surprised by a public altercation involving the team. . . .”

 

“. . . Sokovian officials had long objected to missions being carried out on their soil without their express consent. The disaster in May -- with its terrible death toll and incalculable property damage  -- is an even greater controversy, given the Avengers’ involvement in the creation of the so-called Ultron program. Much has been said in recent months about the program itself, but it is undeniably a supreme example of what a devastating cocktail wealth, power, and zero accountability can make . . . . Tony Stark, apart from numerous class-action lawsuits, has not yet been convicted of even a simple misdemeanor by any American court. Sokovian diplomatic relations with United States have been all but severed, perhaps irreparably. . . . ”

 

“. . . Giving a single group of people unrestricted access to information, resources, funds, and legal immunity makes misuse and corruption nearly inevitable. If the Avengers are, as spokesperson Captain Rogers claims, devoted to protecting the world’s citizens, should they not be first in line to sign the proposed legislation?

While we as a people certainly owe a debt of gratitude to enhanced individuals for their acts of courage in times of great need, incidents like Lagos will continue to happen unless some necessary and long-overdue government regulation is implemented.”

 

\-- “From New York to Sokovia to Lagos: The Human Cost of Avenging”

_Mara Isfahani, Senior Correspondent, New York Times, April 30, 2016_

 

    “. . . Problems with the Security and Regulation Council (SRC) arose from the first announcement of the task force, which U. N. Secretary General Shu-t’ien Li called ‘grossly underrepresented in terms of non-North American members.’  Other ambassadors, including representatives from Sweden, Nigeria, South Korea, Argentina, Iran, and Egypt, soon joined him in expressing dissatisfaction with the makeup of the SRC. These concerns were promptly waved aside. . . . “

 

    “. . . The SRC co-chairmen, Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross and veteran U.S. Senator Elena Nyugen (D-New York) were quick to assure the public that the Accords were an international effort to control a growing problem. At the time, it seemed like a practical solution to a chain of Avengers-related disasters that had caused tremendous loss of property and life. What sensible man or woman, after all, would object to new safety measures that old laws were no longer equipped to handle?

    The SRC was counting on that response. In singing the praises of security, it failed to publicize the other purpose of the Sokovia Accords: deployment. . . .”

 

    “. . . . It became apparent that the Sokovia Accords would effectively allow for the creation of a government-sanctioned army. In being able to forcibly register, regulate, and deploy enhanced individuals, favored nations of the SRC would essentially have government-funded access to a superpowered demolition crew. . . . “

 

    “. . . . It’s undeniable that Steven Rogers’s publicly-expressed outrage about his colleagues being forced to accept SRC-sanctioned missions regardless of ethical or moral objections made him a target -- a legendary symbol of American exceptionalism gone turncoat. . . .  The media blitz was immediate and incredible, a calculated effort to discredit a man who had done nothing but voice his opinions about a measure that would directly affect persons like himself . . . . To any jaded observer of this century’s political discourse, it’s no surprise that his protest ended with his death. . . . ”

 

    “. . . . The prospect of possible amendments to the Sokovia Accords is now being tossed around, but it comes too late for Steven Rogers and the former Avengers still fleeing their warrants. The SRC has shown its true colors: they cannot and apparently will not ever account for the legal and ethical pitfalls of registering and deploying citizens with no regard to age, cultural mores, or religious beliefs without outside pressure. Their campaign for transparency is nothing but grandiose lip-service. . . . “

 

    “. . . This debate is not just about the the late Captain Rogers, the Avengers, or other known and unknown enhanced individuals. This is about the creeping erosion of privacy in the name of security. This is about everyone who’s faced with a choice between autonomy and imprisonment. If ‘unenhanced’ citizens continue to do nothing, there’s no hope for any of us.”

 

                -- “The Execution of Captain America”

                    _Zachary P. Santos for TIME Magazine, July 2016_

 

***

_November 2016_

_Gillette, Wyoming_

   

When Barnes goes outside one morning to get the snow shovel, he finds a cat sleeping in the shed.

 

He stares at it for a few seconds before shutting the door to keep out the cold. The cat opens its yellow eyes and stares back at him, bottlebrush tail flicking slowly back and forth. Its fur is white and orange and its nose looks squished. It has a purple collar with a little metal tag. He lets the cat sniff his fingers before turning up the tag to read it. It says CHUCK.

 

“How’d you get in here?” he asks. “It’s freezing.”

 

It blinks at him.

 

“Suit yourself.”  As Barnes pulls the snow shovel out from behind the woodpile, the cat leaps down from the shelf and plants itself imperiously in front of his boots.

 

Chuck is very, very fat.

 

Barnes decides to take the cat inside. Steve will know what to do with it. He slings the shovel over his shoulder and picks up Chuck before going back outside and latching the door against the blistering wind. He lets the cat curl against his jacket as he walks down the winding driveway back to the house. It sticks its nose behind his ear and sneezes.

 

It’s a nice place that he and Steve have here, nicer than anything either of them have had before. Wilson found it on the internet. It’s a good-sized ranch house, with french doors and a porch and a big yard with a fence. Best of all, it’s twenty-five miles out from the nearest town and well hidden in the crevice of a low valley. They won’t be able to stay more than a year or so, of course, but it’s a massive upgrade from their last safehouse, even if it still snows sometimes.

 

He brushes off his boots on the mat before going inside. He locks the deadbolt behind him.

 

“Buck?”

 

“‘S me. Got the shovel.” Chuck squirms in his grip, and he feels the delicate pinprick of claws against his chest.

 

Steve is sitting on the floor in the living room, looking through the latest packet that came in the mail. There are two empty mugs, a stack of file folders, and a handful of uncapped highlighters fanned out across the coffee table in front of him. Steve glances over at him as he comes into the foyer and does a double-take. “Is that a cat?”

 

“Yup.” Barnes detaches Chuck’s claws from his sweater and tips it onto the couch. It doesn’t bother splaying out its feet to catch itself -- it just sort of _flops_ down onto the cushions like a pillow with too much stuffing, its pink tongue peeping out. “It was in the shed. Its name is Chuck.”

 

Steve looks like he’s trying not to laugh. He gets up with a pained grunt and perches on the other side of the couch, holding out one hand for the cat to smell. He pets it carefully and then scratches its chin, and it immediately waddles its way onto his lap and curls up. Of course it does.

 

“Poor thing,” Steve murmurs. He rubs the cat behind the ears and it starts purring like a wheezy motorbike. “It must be somebody’s housecat if it’s got a collar. Looks well-fed too. I wonder how it ended up way out here.”

 

“I want to know how it broke into the shed.”

 

Steve huffs out a little laugh. “It’s a cat. I don’t think it’s on Hydra’s payroll.”

 

“Wouldn’t put it past them.” Barnes shrugs off his coat and props the shovel up against the wall. “I can ask around the next time I’m in town and see if any of the neighbors are missing their tomcat.”

 

Steve lifts Chuck’s tail up gingerly. “I’m pretty sure Chuck’s a girl.”

 

“Huh.” He kicks off his boots and folds himself down in front of the coffee table where Steve was sitting. The carpet’s still warm. “Carter send you some new stuff?”

 

“Sam did. He and Wanda are in Kansas somewhere. Here, I’ve got something for you.” Steve leans over his shoulder and plucks up a thin sheaf of papers, stapled along the side. “Wanda found old medical records for Helmut Zemo. She couldn’t get an intact copy, but she sent a summary. There’s nothing special about it, except for this bit right here.” He flips to the second page. “Look. When Helmut was seventeen, there was some sort of industrial accident, or maybe an experiment of his dad’s that went wrong -- the record isn’t clear either way. But whatever it was, there was a caustic adhesive that . . . uh. . . .did some serious damage. Totally sterile.”

 

Barnes takes the packet and smooths down the front cover. The type is slightly smudged, the paper crinkled at the corners from a long trip in the post. “So our Zemo probably isn’t his kid. At least not biologically.”

 

“I think it’s safe to assume at this point. Seems to me that there’s not a lot of hope of getting any DNA match to identify our guy.”

 

“Hmm.” He can feel Steve’s eyes on the back of his neck. Chuck chirrups. “Did Maximoff say where she got it?”

 

“A contact.”

 

Barnes tosses the papers back onto the table. “Very helpful.”

 

“She’s being careful,” Steve chides. He taps his socked toes lightly against Barnes’s shoulder blades and gives him a teasing nudge. Barnes moves instinctively to swat at him and then rethinks it -- he’s hit Steve enough to last both of them a lifetime. Instead he rocks his knuckles against Steve’s upraised knee. It barely makes him budge, but he smiles at Barnes with something like approval.

 

Barnes turns back to the spread on the table, pleased with himself and feeling like a chump for it. His cheeks feel hot.

 

“What do you make of it?” Steve asks.

 

It takes Barnes a moment to realize he’s talking about Zemo, not their childish shoving match. “I don’t know,” he says. “What about you?”

 

“It got me thinking. We know that Helmut died after being a test subject for one of Dr. Heinrich’s experiments. But why would a father risk his only son like that? It doesn’t---”

 

“You just said it yourself.”

 

“What?”

 

“Kid was sterile. They made him useful.”

 

“That’s terrible.”

 

Barnes shrugs.

 

Steve sags back against the arm of the sofa, still rubbing Chuck’s ears absently. He’s silent, frowning at the wall like it insulted his ma. Barnes lets him think, occupying himself with sorting through the latest batch of data.

 

It comes to the house semi-regularly now, sent in from all corners -- the two of them have become something of a remote information hub. Romanoff and Carter mail press releases and transcripts from the private hearings of the SRC, recorded by Hill. Wilson and Maximoff are doing laps around the country, hitting up every contact the Avengers have ever had in the hopes of getting a solid lead or two -- after Katja Bern’s execution, it’s better to assume that all of their past associates are in danger of getting summarily offed -- and they send along the meager scraps they find.

 

Steve had wanted to go along. In fact, he’d thrown a fit (inasmuch as he was capable of having a fit, anyway) when he’d realized that none of them had any intention of allowing him to leave Cape Disappointment with Wilson and Maximoff. It was too dangerous; Barnes and Wilson had concluded quietly that the fast, frenetic pace and the chance of discovery would be too much. Even if he could keep up, keeping low-profile meant staying out of fights, and fights were inevitable if Hydra got involved. Steve had argued passionately that he was fine, that he was getting better, and that he was coming whether they wanted him to or not. (“Like hell you are,” Wilson had snapped. “Barnes, if he tries to follow us, do me a favor and put him in a headlock. For the next decade.”) Eventually, he’d been convinced, but only when Maximoff pointed out that any contacts they met with might realize that Captain America was still alive -- not exactly wise to give a tentative ally blackmail material. And if he stayed out of sight, he’d be trapped inside a revolving door of shitty hotels and squat-houses. He’d be more helpful keeping his distance from the main fight and keeping track of the data that was funneled to them.

 

“If not having grandkids meant that much to the doctor,” Steve says suddenly, “do you think Project Zipline might have had something to do with reproduction? Reversing his sterility, maybe . . . or maybe even cloning?”

 

“It’s a long-shot,” Barnes replies doubtfully. “I can’t see Hydra being too interested in reverse sterilization. Cloning sounds more up their alley, but there have been lots of projects looking into that already: Experiment Pygmalion, ISE-34, the Mendel Unit. . . . ”

 

“True,” Steve murmurs.

 

Barnes scratches his chin uneasily. There’s no doubt in his mind that the endless tissue and DNA samples they’d taken from him over the years had been used in some of those projects. His blood is probably still out there in some freezer somewhere, collecting dust.

 

He feels a nudge against his toes. Chuck has jumped down from Steve’s lap and is sniffing Barnes’s socked feet.

 

“You’re a fuckin’ weird cat,” he says. “Hey, Steve, do we have any milk?”

 

“I don’t think cats are actually supposed to drink cow’s milk anymore. I read it somewhere.” Steve starts to get up but Barnes waves him back down. He’s been on his feet too much today.

 

“We got tuna?”

 

“Yeah, in the cupboard.” Steve gets up again, determined, and Barnes has no choice but to let him. Steve roots around in the drawer for a can opener. With his strength, ripping open the lid of the tuna can would be as simple as popping the tab on a Coke, but Steve always uses the proper tools.

 

He hands the open can to Barnes, and Barnes dumps it in a bowl and puts it down. Chuck dives in face-first. Flecks of wet fish fly everywhere.

 

“Appalling,” Barnes says.

 

“A disgrace to cat-kind,” Steve agrees with a laugh.

 

Barnes watches the cat eat and thinks, oddly, of the files on the table. He thinks about the blood samples, and Dr. Zemo’s unfortunate son, and the terrifying possibility of child soldiers with his eyes. “Did you want kids?”

 

Steve’s eyebrows tilt up, quizzical. “I didn’t think I’d live long enough to have them.”

 

“But if you could’ve?” he presses.

 

Steve thinks for a bit, shifting to sit on one of the high stools at the breakfast bar. “I suppose I would have liked to have had them with Peggy, if she wanted them. I never asked how she felt about it. I can’t see myself having them now, even if I found someone. It’s a dangerous world.”

 

“Did I want them?”

 

Steve hesitates.

 

“You can tell me.”

 

“I know, sorry. Yeah, you did. Pretty badly. You talked a lot about having a big family. Six or seven kids, you said.” He grins. “I said you were nuts, but you always liked babies. You were good with them too.”

 

Barnes knows that he ought to feel sadness, or maybe regret -- another part of himself that Hydra stole from him -- but he doesn’t feel anything, really. A child, a family, a wife, a home . . . they’re all abstract concepts, something far beyond his comprehension. People like him don’t deserve those things.

 

“There’s still time,” Steve says kindly.

 

“Sure,” Barnes says. There’s not enough time in the whole fucking universe.

 

***

 

 _Molotov_.

 

 _Molotov_.

 

The word echoes in his head, filling it up, making it pound and ache. He can taste it. He can smell it.

 

“Bucky, stop!”

 

He hears screaming and frantic footsteps on tile. He breaks a door off its hinges and when it crashes to floor he walks right over it. He shoots a man and his head ruptures in a spray of blood and brain matter.

 

He barrels through room after room. People flee. They shout. Some of them fire at him. He kills them.

 

_I am Dr. Heinrich Zemo, Mr. Barnes. Secretary Ross has asked me to evaluate your psychological health. There’s no need to be afraid of me. This won’t hurt._

 

A woman blocks his path, shiny golden hair flying around her head as she dances around him. He knows her face, vaguely. She talks to him, tries to get in his way, kicks him hard across the face. He spits out a tooth and throws her across the room. He runs.

 

His head hurts so badly. He can’t think past it. There’s so much pain. He has a mission. There is an imperative. He has no choice.

 

 _Don’t do this. Don’t do this oh christ please don’t do this_.

 

The big, blond man tackles him next to the elevator. He feels rage, fear, trapped by the man’s unyielding hands. The gun is in his grasp, but he doesn’t shoot.

 

Rogers, he thinks. It’s Rogers.

 

His head hurts.

 

 _God stop please stop it you’ll kill him_.

 

He grabs Rogers’s shirt and shoves him back against the elevator. Rogers’s head snaps back and hits the door and the steel dents. He runs to the emergency exit and leaps up the stairs. He hears Rogers follow him, still calling out.

 

“Bucky, please! It’s me, it’s Steve. You know me.”

 

_You are a machine. You have no name._

 

He whirls around and punches Rogers in the face. He hears bone crack and he keeps running until he reaches the roof.

 

Stark is there. A red-haired woman leaps down from a scaffold, landing a few cautious feet away from him. He knows Stark. He knows Rogers. He knows the red-haired woman. He can’t remember her name.

 

Rogers catches up to him and tries to restrain him. Rogers’s mouth is bleeding. He ducks out of his grip and aims at the woman first. He has fought her before. She is dangerous. He must eliminate her. She will stop the mission.

 

 _Concentrate, Mr. Barnes. Focus on my voice_.

 

He shoves Rogers out of the way. _Stay down goddammit stay down_. Stark steps in front of him and gropes for his gun. The metal gauntlet on Stark’s hand covers the barrel. He feels frustration. He fires the gun in Stark’s face and then pushes him aside too, uncaring of whether or not the bullet met its mark.

 

The woman leaps at him, and her strong legs are like a vice around his neck. He chokes. He digs his fingers into her thighs until he breaks the skin. He hears her grunt in pain, and he flips her over his shoulder, his metal arm snug under her chin. She struggles but can’t break his hold. She fires her pistol over her shoulder and nicks his cheek.

 

“Natasha!” Rogers cries. “Bucky, let her go!”

 

“Sputnik,” the woman hisses.

 

It’s like a gunshot to the head. His knees fold, his muscles seize, his eyes roll back. The world lurches and spins and blurs, and he starts to fall, but -- but ----

 

The world snaps back like a rubber band. His eyes refocus. He tightens his metal hand around the red-haired woman’s throat and breaks her neck.

 

Rogers screams.

 

He lets go. Her body slithers to the floor and crumples into a heap at his feet. Her eyes, red with burst blood vessels, are open, startled. He pulls the gun from her limp hand -- _no no no no no_ \-- and points it at Rogers. Rogers is weeping. He doesn’t move.

 

The bullet blows cleanly through his skull, right between his eyes.

 

Barnes wakes up and rolls over onto his stomach to vomit onto the carpet.

 

It takes him an awful, shuddering minute to recollect where he is. His bedroom is dark and warm, sweat-soaked covers tossed to the foot of the bed. He stays right where he is, hanging half over the edge of the bed, panting, strings of saliva dripping onto the floor.

 

The hall light clicks on and spills underneath his closed door. He hears footsteps and then a soft knock.

 

“Buck? You okay?”

 

He wipes his mouth sloppily with his hand and shifts his weight back until he’s kneeling on the mattress. He feels cold all over, sweat drying in itchy patches on his face. He can smell the sour sharpness of his stomach acid -- there’s bile splashed over his collar and down his shirt. The shame is overwhelming.

 

“Don’t come in,” he rasps when he hears the knob start to turn. “Please.”

 

“Alright,” Steve murmurs, after a brief pause. “If you’re sure you’re. . . . I’ll be in the kitchen if you . . . um. . . “

 

“Fine,” Barnes says. He waits until Steve leaves the hall before getting up. His legs are unsteady, but he goes into his bathroom and fills a bucket with soapy water. He scrubs the carpet clean and strips off the sheets and then steps right into the tub with his clothes still on. He stays in the shower for a long time.

 

Eventually, he scrapes himself off the chilly bathroom floor and gets dressed. Stepping out into the hallway, he can hear the sound of soft jazz coming from the kitchen. The air smells like eggs and frying vegetables.

 

Steve is in the kitchen, stirring food in a skillet. If Barnes knows him at all, he stayed there all night, waiting for Barnes to come out. He swallows past a lump in his throat and makes his steps heavy enough to announce his presence.

 

Steve glances over his shoulder. He smiles, but Barnes can see his eyes narrow intently, scanning for signs of injury. “Morning, Buck.”

 

“Morning.” He sits at the marble breakfast bar and watches Steve plate the skillet’s contents into two blue bowls: fluffy eggs, slivers of red and green pepper, onions, cheese, potatoes, and chunks of leftover steak from yesterday’s stir-fry. Steve brings the bowls and two big glasses of milk over the bar and slides one over to Barnes. It smells so good that his mouth waters.

 

He doesn’t think he can eat it.

 

Steve doesn’t seem interested all that much either. They sip at their milk in silence. Steve does eat a few bites of steak and egg, but he soon ends up picking at it, shifting it back and forth across the bowl with his fork.

 

Barnes puts down his milk. It feels like it’s curdling in his stomach. “I’m okay now.”

 

“Was it a nightmare?”

 

It’s tempting to lie, say that he doesn’t remember again, or that it’s too hard to talk about. He picks up his fork and makes himself choke down a mouthful of egg. “Dreamed about the facility, just like it happened. Except I killed Romanoff. And you.”

 

Steve’s face twitches a bit, but he seems calm. “Whatever you dreamed, it didn’t happen. You stopped yourself.”

 

That’s a bald-faced lie. Romanoff’s _Sputnik_ trigger had shut him right down; he’d been dead to the world for a solid day. If she hadn’t done it, he very well might have killed all of them. He’d like to think he would have been able to spare Steve, if it came down to it, but truthfully he couldn’t say for certain.

 

“I want him dead,” he says abruptly. Dr. Zemo’s face is looming in the back of his head like a ghost, cold and prim and self-satisfied; it takes Barnes a second to recognize that the growing heat in his chest is _hatred_. He doesn’t feel that too much anymore. But the nightmare brought back too much -- that slippery, whore-son fraud had nearly stolen his mind away from him just when he’d finally gotten it settled. “We need to find him.”

 

“We will. We’re making progress.”

 

“All we have are files for two Zemos, and neither one of them are the guy we’re looking for.”

 

“They’re connected somehow,” Steve says stubbornly. “There’s always a loose thread somewhere. We just have to pull on it.”

 

Barnes pushes the eggs to one side of the bowl and then back, poking at a cube of steak. “Sure.”

 

Steve’s chin is thrust out and his eyes are narrowed. He’s got that look that means he’s about to say something real stupid. Barnes heads him off.

 

“Look, nevermind. I’m sour this morning, that’s all.”

 

Steve softens a bit. “You know you can ask me to come in, Buck. I don’t mind. Having a little bit of company helps sometimes -- it makes it less. . . . heavy.”

 

“Sounds like a fun time, watching me puke all over myself. A real riot.”

 

He shrugs. “I don’t care. You’ve done the same for me when I was sick.”

 

“Not the same.”

 

“You wiped my ass for me when I had pneumonia.”

 

“It’s still --- wait, I did?”

 

Steve laughs and gets up to refill his glass.

 

Barnes waits. Steve finishes off his fresh glass of milk standing at the sink and then rinses it out. He sits back down and takes another bite of eggs. Barnes finally can’t stand it any longer. “So? Are you pulling my leg or not?”

 

“Eat something and I’ll tell you.”

 

“Fuck you.” But Barnes stabs a few scraps of pepper and steak onto his fork and manages to swallow them without too much trouble.

 

“It was in July, the year I turned twenty-two. It was the lousiest birthday I ever had, and I spent my tenth birthday laid up in bed after Tim O’Grady broke my arm.” Steve chews on his fork for a minute, thinking. “The weather was hot and soupy that year, and my chest was full up. My asthma got so bad, it was to the point where I was having an attack two times a week. I suppose my lungs just got tired. Anyway, I ended up getting pneumonia. I had a high fever. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t eat, and I was really weak. Ma’d been dead for a year, and we were sharing a tenement. You’d come straight home from work and take care of me all night. I needed help with everything. I couldn’t stand long enough to take a bath, and I couldn’t even make it down the hall to the washroom. You had to carry me there a couple times a day. It was humiliating, but you brushed it off, said it didn’t matter, and I could see that you were telling the truth. You made it easier to bear it.”

 

Barnes shrugs. “You were sick.”

 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Buck, but you’re sick right now.”

 

 _So are you_. It’s too cruel to say out loud, even if it’s true. “You don’t need to deal with this.”

 

“I’ve dealt with worse things from people I cared about a lot less.”

 

It should be comforting. Instead, an unexpected surge of rage boils up into his belly. He shoves his barely-touched breakfast away with too much force, spoon and knife clattering. His milk teeters and almost tips over. Steve doesn’t flinch, a parent watching his bratty kid throw a tantrum. It only makes him angrier.

 

“Just leave it,” he says harshly. “Let it alone.”

 

“Bucky.”

 

“No. You don’t get it. You’ll _never_ get it.” He grips his fork so tightly that it starts to bend, curling over the back of his hand. “Why can’t you _understand_? I murdered a little girl. A whole family -- burned them alive in their apartment. I shot a man right in front of his wife and then put a bullet between her eyes too. Slit a lady’s throat and threw her body in the water. Blew the tires off a car and killed ----”

 

“Stop it!” Steve snaps.

 

They hush up, both of them puffing at each other like racehorses. Barnes stands up and kicks back his chair. “You say you want to listen,” he hisses, “but you don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

 

He doesn’t wait for Steve’s answer. He can’t stand to look at him for a minute longer. He retreats to the bedroom on stiff legs and locks the door securely behind him.

 

***

 

The knock on the door doesn’t come for four hours -- Barnes was expecting it in one.

 

His temper’s had plenty of time to wear itself out. He’s still getting used to feeling anger; he genuinely hadn’t thought he’d had any left in him, but here they are. Supposedly it means he’s processing, that he’s starting to connect himself to what happened to him. Wilson says it’s a good thing. He’s not so sure. In some ways, the numb detachment had been better -- more manageable, anyway. He doesn’t like feeling out of control.

 

“You can come in,” he says, not bothering to raise his voice. He knows Steve can hear him. He can smell coffee too -- Steve must have brought a cup as a peace offering.

 

Sure enough, there’s a steaming mug in Steve’s hand as he steps cautiously through the doorway. When he sees Barnes sitting on his bed, his tense shoulders relax. “Can we talk?”

 

“Coffee first.”

 

Steve hands it over and perches gingerly on the mattress while he drinks it. He’s quiet until Barnes finishes the last dregs -- only then does he say, “I keep messing this up. I’m sorry, Buck.”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“I want you to talk about it,” Steve insists. “I want to hear it. No, listen to me, I’m serious. It’s not good, bottling things up. Sam tells me I do that too much. It wears on a fella.”

 

“What, you scared I’m gonna off myself?” The look on Steve’s face gives him pause. “You are.”

 

Steve wets his lips and lifts his chin, nervous but determined. “It happens a lot. And that’s just with regular soldiers, regular folks, not guys like us. There were suicides -- not in the Commandos, but in some of the battalions we worked with. Couple of guys turned their guns on themselves. A nurse at one of the Belgian bases hung herself from a window. Jim Morita knew her. He took it real rough.” He toes at the carpet. “She was a nice girl. She treated prisoners who’d been at the camps, and lots of them died after they were rescued. It was hard to watch. Maybe that’s why she did it.”

 

“I won’t do it,” Barnes says. “You need me.”

 

Steve presses the back of his hand to his own mouth and hunches over.

 

“Steve?”

 

It takes him a long minute to respond. “How well do you remember Peggy?”

 

There are fragmented pieces here and there: bright red lips, clever eyes, a clear and brilliant fierceness that radiated from her entire body. He’d wholeheartedly admired and resented her. He doesn’t remember why. He knows that Steve loved her, though, and it’s enough for him to approve of the shade of her memory. “I don’t remember much.”

 

“It was the spring of ‘42, and we were in Vichy, trying to find a communication bunker. We knew it was there, but we’d been looking for it for weeks. Peggy was with us, and we finally got into a club run by some Nazi sympathizers. A few of the dancers were with the Free French, and they’d passed along information about a secret meeting that was going to be held in the backroom.

 

“Long story short, we got our information, but it went sour in the end. Peg and I got swarmed when the officers got wind of spies -- it was probably my fault. I was never good at acting. One of them had a knife and went for my back. Peggy stepped in and took it right in the shoulder.” He looks down his plate, brow furrowed with remembered fear. “Jesus, I thought she was dead. She was bleeding so bad. But we got out and she made it all the way back to the base before passing out. Monty was driving like a madman.”

 

He chuckles, a hiccup of dark amusement. “I was real steamed at her. I could’ve taken the knife and it would have healed right away. It probably wouldn’t have killed me. I kept asking her why she’d done it. She said something I never forgot. She said, ‘Darling, I’m selfish. It’s far easier to die than to get left behind.’

 

“The thing is, I’m selfish too. I do need you.” He bends over and rests his elbows against his knees. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I _can’t_ understand, Buck, not really. I spent all those years sleeping in the ice. It was easier to die.”

 

Barnes stares down into his cup. “You didn’t leave me behind.”

 

They’ve tread and retread that argument, enough that it’s gone stale, and Steve’s guilt seems to loom as large as ever. “We’ll agree to disagree,” he says. “And you’re right -- I don’t always want to hear what you have to say, and that’s because I don’t like to think of you suffering alone while I was taking a nap in the Arctic. But you can’t let me be selfish anymore, Bucky. Tell me. Tell me everything, every awful thing if you want to, and I _will_ listen.”

 

“You don’t owe me anything.”

 

Steve hugs him.

 

At first his body doesn’t know how to react. Steve hasn’t touched him like this in. . . well, in _months._ He screws his eyes shut. He breathes hard into Steve’s shoulder, his hands hovering over Steve’s back, not quite touching. But Steve just waits him out, patient. His arms are deliberately gentle, pressing but not restraining. The shadows of his nightmare have been dogging Barnes all day, and this is the final straw -- if he leans in, just a little, he might crumble to pieces. Nothing left but a pile of ashes and a metal arm.

 

“Family don’t owe family,” Steve says, with the air of a man repeating the echo of someone else’s words.

 

He wants to cry. He wants to throw something. Instead he puts his head down on Steve’s shoulder and hangs on for dear life.

 

***

 

Chuck is in the shed again.

 

Barnes doesn’t even bother shooing her away. He lets the cat follow him casually back up the drive to the house and opens the front door for her. She moseys inside like she owns the place.

 

“Again?” Steve says disapprovingly as she winds herself around his legs, purring up a storm. He bends down to scratch her ears.

 

“I keep taking her home, she keeps coming back,” Barnes says. “I figure she pulls the same trick with all the neighbors. It’s why she’s so fat.” But he goes into the kitchen to get the tuna anyway.

 

***

 

Barnes waits in line at the post office.

 

The kid behind him, weighed down with packages, is wearing a UW hoodie that reeks of cannabis. There’s a mother in the other line with a sleeping baby in a sling, arguing with the cashier about a damaged parcel. The old woman in front of him is having difficulty choosing between stamps with planets on them and stamps with ducks. It’s been seventeen minutes.

 

Barnes shifts his weight, ignoring the impatient snuffles of the pothead. He’s got time. While he doesn’t especially like being out in town, it’s good for him to be in public. He can hardly hone his skills by being secluded -- and isn’t that the goal, to be as normal as possible?

 

The old woman finally chooses the planets and pays, and the line moves forward.

 

“I’m here to pick up a package for Joe Rushman,” Barnes tells the cashier, sliding the delivery slip and his false ID across the counter with his gloved hand. Steve had asked for stamps. They’d been sending a lot of mail lately. “And stamps too.”

 

“Stamps too?” the clerk confirms.

 

“I’ll take the ducks,” Barnes says.

 

When he gets home, the truck tires spitting gravel all the way up the driveway, Steve’s sitting on the porch and talking on the phone. He looks pleased, so it’s probably not bad news. He waves.

 

Barnes heads into the house and gets a kitchen knife to open up the package. The return address is one of Romanoff’s PO boxes, but the handwriting isn’t hers. He slits open the tape. Underneath a pile of packing peanuts is another box, and Barnes realizes what it is as soon as he sees the medical information label on its side. There’s a yellow post-it note on top that says _40_ with a little arrow underneath.

 

The door opens. “Sam says hi,” Steve says, leaning over the breakfast bar. “What’s that?”

 

Barnes takes it out, carefully shakes off the styrofoam, and hands it to Steve. “It’s your nitroprusside. Barton sent it. It says there are forty doses, so it should keep us for another two months.”

 

Steve doesn’t say a word. When Barnes comes back into the living room later that night, he finds the box hidden in the bottom cupboard behind the cereal, the label facing the wall.

 

***

 

It’s three weeks until Christmas.

 

Barnes might not have even noticed if the decorations hadn’t started sprouting up around town like weeds. One day, there are lights and ribbons strung around the streetlamps. The next a tree and a menorah appear in the corner of the post office. The stores are suddenly offering sides of ham and tiny, sweet oranges. Christmas songs start to play incessantly on the radio.

 

Steve doesn’t seem to be all that interested, but Barnes is fascinated. He has no solid memories of the holiday -- or any holiday, really -- but there’s a certain familiarity about the trees and the colored ornaments. At the grocery store, he buys a big box of red, green, and gold glass balls on impulse and smuggles them home under his coat so Steve doesn’t see them.

 

Steve has been wan and gray lately, staying up late to study the SRC amendment proceedings and pick them apart with Hill and Carter. The council has called a recess for the winter break, but they’d left off at a particularly tense point of contention about the registration of enhanced children and teenagers. The debate has been fierce on both sides, the opinion of the council frustratingly opaque, and Barnes knows that Steve is afraid.

 

He doesn’t remember if Steve even likes Christmas, but the ornaments might make him look a little less tired.

 

Once Steve is coaxed to his bedroom to take an afternoon nap, Barnes retrieves his prize from under the car-seat. It isn’t until he’s back in the living room that it occurs to him that they don’t have a tree to hang them on. It’s a considerable setback. There’s time to go outside and cut one down, he supposes, but it doesn’t seem practical if it’s going to die in a few weeks. He regroups and decides to hang them around the whole house instead -- better than just bunched together in one place anyway. He gets a ball of twine and ties some of them to the cupboard handles, a few on the curtain rod, one on the towel rack. He hangs a row of them from the porch rails in alternating colors. He tapes three or four to the hall ceiling. He puts one in the fruit bowl.

 

By the time he’s finished, he’s broken five of them, and he would have broken more if he hadn’t switched to holding them with his flesh hand and attaching the twine with his metal one. His fingers just hadn’t been able to grasp them correctly -- if he held them too delicately, they slipped through his fingers. If he tightened his grip, they shattered.

 

It’s . . . worrying. He sweeps up the pieces and puts them in the trash, vaguely surprised that the breaking glass hadn’t woken Steve. He sits down at the breakfast bar, his triumph spoiled by his growing unease. He flexes his hand a few times and recalibrates the plates twice, and he has to face it -- there’s a noticeable lag in his arm’s responses. The touch-sensitivity in his hand is fading, or malfunctioning. He’s been denying it for months now, dismissing dropped cups and pens as momentary slips, but it’s coming to a head and he knows it.

 

He doesn’t know how to repair his arm. He doesn’t even know where the access panels are. His handlers had been careful to hide it from him, and he’d always been put under when they did major internal repairs. He can’t do it himself, but the thought of someone touching him, opening his arm up, digging around inside it is . . . well.

 

He rubs his wrist, the cold metal fleetingly warmed by his hand, and gets up to start dinner.

 

Shattering glass evidently wasn’t enough to wake Steve, but the smell of cooking roast eventually does. He wanders into the kitchen just as Barnes is adding more beef broth to the pan.

 

“Smells good,” Steve says around a yawn. “You didn’t have to put it in.”

 

“I was up.”

 

“You want baked potatoes on the side? There’s a new bag in the pantry. Here, I’ll go get them.” Steve heads out into the hall.

 

There’s a pause. Barnes waits.

 

Steve’s footsteps move back toward the kitchen, and he peers around the corner. “Did you put those up, Buck?”

 

He nods, heart pounding.

 

Steve studies his face for a breath and then smiles, warm and honest. “They look real nice.”

 

***

 

Barnes starts to dream.

 

Not nightmares. Not by any means. These dreams leave him startling himself awake in the early hours of the morning, sweating like a stuck pig, his pulse going crazy and his dick as hard a rock.

 

It’s a new development.

 

It’s hard to say if his handlers had given him something to neuter him or not. He figures the odds are about fifty-fifty -- he’d been shot up with all different kinds of drug cocktails, but then again he’d never had a mission that left him unfrozen long enough to develop an interest in his own johnson.

 

He gets himself off in the shower or in bed, after Steve’s asleep. It’s nice. It feels good, a momentary rush of pleasure and relief. It makes him feel in control. He comes or he doesn’t. It’s up to him.

 

It scratches an itch, but he can’t help but think -- lying in his bed with cooling sweat and sticky hands -- that there’s supposed to be more to it.

 

***

 

Romanoff arrives unannounced on Christmas Eve, blowing in with a headwind of wet snow and a car full to the brim with supplies.

 

Evidently indifferent to the half-dozen or so weapons that are no doubt stashed underneath her furry black coat, Steve hugs her so hard her boot heels leave the ground. “Nat!” Steve’s delight is infectious -- Barnes watches Romanoff’s face unfurl in a genuine grin and realizes with a start that he’s smiling too.

 

“Hello, boys.” She presses a kiss to Steve’s cheek, her red lipstick leaving a glossy imprint behind.  “Hope you don’t mind having a guest for a few days.”

 

“Of course not,” Steve protests. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.” He gives her another lingering hug for good measure, and Romanoff looks over his shoulder at Barnes, her expression both intent and conciliatory. She’s giving him a choice, he realizes.

 

“It’s cold out here,” Barnes says. “Let’s get your things inside.”

 

They all shoulder a share of Romanoff’s luggage -- it looks like she crammed an entire warehouse in her Jeep. As soon as they’re inside, Romanoff peels off her coat and hat and drapes them over the couch like she’s been here a hundred times before. She’s wearing jeans and an oversized sweater with a cartoon snowman on it. Her hair is platinum blond and cropped to her nape, spiked up in one wave over her forehead. “I brought cash, clothes, canned food, MREs, and some field kits,” she says briskly, separating three large duffels from the pile in the foyer. “There’s some ammunition and updated electronics in there as well.”

 

Steve thanks her warmly and immediately goes to start supper, apparently unable to sit still when he could be feeding someone’s face. Romanoff indulges him, slipping away for only a moment to make a call before coming back to gamely help Barnes assemble the salad while Rogers makes the pasta. She’s lightning-quick with the knife, slicing up dried tomatoes and chopping almonds with no effort; she gives every appearance of being at ease, but there’s a thin line of tension in her back. He does have a knife in his hand too, after all, and Romanoff has always struck him as a pragmatic woman.

 

“How are things back home?” Steve asks. The noodles are already boiling, kicking up feathers of fragrant steam into the air. Barnes leans toward the warmth -- it’s almost a reflex at this point. “Have you heard from Sam and Wanda? How’s Sharon? And Maria? Clint and the kids?”

 

“Sam and Wanda are fine as of yesterday. They’re in Georgia.”

 

“Zemo’s in Georgia?”

 

Romanoff flicks an almond into the air with her thumb and catches it neatly in her mouth. She chews primly, swallows, and picks up another one. “Sam’s grandmother is. I told them to take a few days off.”

 

“Good, good. They need it.” He sounds relieved, and maybe a little guilty.

 

“It sounds like it’s going well, at least for Wanda. Mrs. Wilson likes her, and apparently she keeps mentioning how Sam’s never brought _someone special_ home for Christmas before.”

 

Steve groans and then chuckles. “Oh no.”

 

Romanoff’s lips twitch before she regains her composure. “It’s bound to be an interesting week for both of them. They sent along some presents for you.”

 

“They didn’t have to do that.”

 

“Tell them that, not me. I’m just the messenger.”

 

The gifts turn out to be a generous tin of Mrs. Wilson’s homemade peanut butter fudge, a stack of well-thumbed novels from Wilson, and some kind of Sokovian protection charm from Maximoff to hang over their door. Barnes and Steve eat half of the fudge before dinner’s even ready. It’s good. Real good. Whoever Wilson’s grandma is, Barnes is damn well disposed to think kindly of her.

 

“Sharon’s got a new project,” Romanoff says as she sets plates and silverware out around the table, “but she’s still keeping an eye out. She said to wish you a Merry Christmas. Clint and Laura and the kids are at her dad’s place, and they’ll stay there a week or so; I have some new pictures of the baby to show you -- remind me if I forget. Maria’s fine too. It’s a headache, dealing with Ross, but we’re lucky she’s there.”

 

Barnes has been silent, watching the easy conversation unfold, but his curiosity gets the better of him. “Is it bad?”

 

She looks at him, her direct gaze as piercing as he remembers. “It could be worse.”

 

“But it’s bad,” Steve concludes.

 

Romanoff shrugs. “The council is evenly divided. Nyugen is leaning toward our motion to strike down the immediate imprisonment provision, and I think that will be conceded by the others. Ross is playing things close, but he’s getting confident again. The press has moved on. People are thinking about other things. We’re mostly just trying to keep it in the news for now -- keep it relevant, make sure the world is watching and they know it. It’s all we can do at this point.” She picks up a plate that she just put down and rearranges it needlessly. She’s nervous, Barnes realizes. “Oh, and Steve?”

 

Steve lifts up the bowl of cooked noodles and starts to carry them over to the table. “Hmm?”

 

“Your charges have been dropped posthumously as of last Thursday.”

 

There’s a hitch in Steve’s stride, but he silently puts the pot down on the table and goes back into the kitchen to get the sauce. Barnes waits and watches. Romanoff’s eyes narrow, cool and thoughtful.

 

“It was by a unanimous vote.”

 

Steve exhales. “Well,” he says, “that’s that, I guess. Here, food’s done. Come eat before it gets cold.”

 

Romanoff sits, and as Barnes pulls out his chair, their eyes meet. Her mask is almost flawless -- he’s hardly ever seen better -- but at that moment he’s certain that they’re thinking the same thing.

 

***

 

Christmas Day is surprisingly pleasant. The three of them sleep late, eat far too much, and neglect to do anything more strenuous than watching football on Romanoff’s laptop. They don’t talk shop at all. Barnes gives Steve his gift, a warm, wool-lined coat that he found at a shop in town. It’s a nice coat, with buttery leather on the outside and a brass zipper. Steve gets cold so easily now.

 

Steve’s eyes get worryingly shiny as he takes it out of the bag, but he thankfully gets a grip on himself and promptly puts the coat on over his t-shirt. Barnes’s own thank-you, when he receives the stack of fine moleskine notebooks and pack of real, old-fashioned fountain pens from Steve, perhaps isn’t as expressed as gracefully. He has to step into the kitchen for a bit to get away from Romanoff’s too-keen gaze, but as soon as he can, he puts the notebooks safely in his backpack. Steve must have planned to mail presents out, because he’s able to produce a gift for Romanoff too -- a beautiful silver pocket-knife and a garden gnome that wins a full-throated laugh from her.

 

Steve is happy, hovering close to Romanoff and soaking up the tokens she brought with her. Steve’s friends have made sure that he isn’t forgotten -- there are videos, pictures, and well wishes from almost everyone. There are pictures of Wilson and Maximoff with his grandma. There’s a formal card from Pepper Potts. Barton gives him a stack of his children’s drawings and a loaf of his wife’s gingerbread; Vision sends a stocking filled, oddly, with chestnuts. Hill sends ribbon candy, and Barnes tries one -- the burst of artificial strawberry on his tongue is so familiar that it’s almost a memory itself. Carter’s gift is a long letter, written by hand, that Steve immediately tucks away inside his breast pocket. There’s a brief, shakily-penned note from Rhodes, who’s still wheelchair-bound but reportedly recovering well. There’s even an awkward video message from that idiot Lang and his giant ant. His kid’s pretty cute, though.

 

The messages have done their work -- there’s color in Steve’s cheeks, and his eyes seem brighter, his smiles coming more easily. Romanoff looks thoroughly satisfied with herself.

 

Of course, it all goes to hell the very next day.

 

As soon as Romanoff emerges from the guest room in the morning, looking deceptively soft and casual in a pajama shirt and sweats, Barnes’s instinct for trouble starts chattering at him. His first thought is to reach for the nearest weapon, but he can see the outline of a single-shooter in Romanoff’s pants, and Steve would be angry if they ruined the kitchen.

 

Barnes watches her wind her way into the kitchen, where Steve is pouring coffee, and finds a clear vantage point by the stove, up on the counter next to one of his caches in the silverware drawer. He sees her looking back at him from the corner of her eye, and she nods slightly. Message received. He forces himself to lean back against the cabinet, mug held loosely in one hand and feet dangling.

 

However badly his emotions tend to blind his judgment, Steve isn’t a fool. He perks up the moment he catches the scent of tension, abandoning his coffee to step back and look between them questioningly. Barnes scrounges up a small smile. _Got your back, pal._ Steve fixes his attention on Romanoff.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“Nothing, at the moment. I wanted to talk to you. Both of you.”

 

“You didn’t just come for a visit.” He sounds unsurprised but disappointed.

 

Romanoff doesn’t smile, but something in her expression softens a tick. “We got a tip from one of our old contacts, and it checks out. Barnes, Hydra knows that you’re stateside. It’s hard to say if they know about Steve, but they’re following up on you. They know you’re not dead. They found my safehouse in Alaska and ransacked it.”

 

Barnes’s stomach drops. He knows what Steve’s going to say.

 

“We’ll leave.” Steve combs a hand through his hair, resolute. “Sam can put the place back on the market.”

 

Barnes frowns down into his coffee. It’s surprising, how much it hurts to think of leaving the house. He’s grown attached to this place, to the porch and the post office, to Chuck, to his bedroom with its pine furniture and soft mattress. They’ve been comfortable here. It was almost like a real house.

 

“I already have a place for you,” Romanoff says. “You’re not going to like it.”

 

“No games, Nat. Just tell me.”

 

“You need a place with better security. You need a place where no one would ever think to look for you. Stark’s offering you your pick of one of his compounds -- there’s one in Venezuela, two in Japan, one in----”

 

“No,” Steve says.

 

“Steve. . . .”

 

“ _No_ , Natasha.”

 

“Listen to me,” Romanoff says, voice hard. “You are in danger. Both of you. You have the chance at a permanent home with access to the best security system in the world and risk-free communication with us. No one is going to think for an instant that Barnes would stay in one of Stark’s residences -- not Hydra, and not the government either. What happens if you don’t go, Rogers? You move, they find you again. You move again, they find you again. That’s no way to live.”

 

Steve shuffles back, looking three words away from panic. Barnes finds himself half on his feet, not sure what to do, but then Steve is gone, out the front door and onto the porch steps. There’s an uncomfortable silence left in his wake. To her credit, it only takes Romanoff a few seconds to collect herself. She hops up to sit on the breakfast bar, across from Barnes. “I had no idea.” Her voice is neutral.

 

Barnes says nothing. He stirs his coffee, takes a measured sip, and then blows out a breath to cool it. He can feel Romanoff’s eyes on him.

 

“He’s afraid of Tony,” she murmurs.

 

Barnes debates with himself for a moment, weighing Romanoff’s value as an ally versus the cost of Steve getting steamed at him for telling her. _To hell with it._ “Of himself too.”

 

She purses her lips and taps her fingers restlessly on the counter. “There are no strings attached, and it’s not a trap. No one asked Stark to volunteer. You would be safe. You’d have instant access to everything you needed.”

 

“Sounds like blood money to me.”

 

Romanoff doesn’t respond.

 

“Look,” he says, “you want him to tell Stark that he’s forgiven him. The thing is, I don’t think he has. You can’t make things the way they were.” He’s learned that fucking lesson ten times over in a hundred different ways.

 

“They’re the only family I’ve ever had,” she says wryly. “Can you blame me?”

 

He decides to repay her honesty with a bit of his own. “No.”

 

Romanoff swings her legs, her face impassive, calculating. “I don’t suppose you’re willing to convince him to accept for your sake. You’re in the most immediate danger.”

 

Right. “I go where he goes.” The thought of putting himself at the mercy of Stark’s hospitality is . . . shit, it’s beyond comprehension right now, actually. He has no idea if he could go through with it. But the thought of Steve going alone is worse. He’s already failed to protect him once. He won’t do it again. “I’m not going to try to convince him. If Hydra comes after me, then they’ll come. It’s nothing we haven’t dealt with before.”

 

Romanoff makes a noncommittal noise. “I’ve already gotten a full report from Sam. Steve’s in no shape to be fighting.”

 

“We’ll manage.”

 

“Well, that’s the end of it then,” Romanoff says. She plucks her phone out from her bra and flicks it on. “Are there any supplies I missed?”

 

Barnes doesn’t believe for an instant that this is the end of it, but he plays along. “He needs more oxygen canisters. Can you get those?”

 

Romanoff’s hand pauses on the screen. “He told me he didn’t need oxygen anymore.”

 

“Well, he lied.”

 

“He’s finally getting better at it,” Romanoff says with a faint note of regret. She types for a minute, painted nails clicking, and then tucks the phone away. “I’ll get some as soon as I can.” She slips gracefully to the floor, her socked feet not making a sound on the tile. “Yesterday was nice. I’d planned on staying until after New Year’s, but I can go.”

 

He mulls it over for a minute and then shrugs. “Stay if you want.”

 

There’s a funny look on her face, like he’s just told her the punchline to a joke that doesn't make sense. She picks up Steve’s discarded mug. “I’ll take this out to him.” She cups it in both hands and looks at him for a moment. “If there had been a way to bring you back, I would have done it first. It was nothing personal.”

 

He’s seen her files, and he knows her story. Someone once took a chance on a lost cause and brought her out of the cold, despite the risks. She probably would have liked to repay that debt. But given the choice between trying to save a cog in Hydra’s wheel and protecting Steve, she’d chosen Steve. It was a practical choice. It’s the choice he would have made himself.

 

“I know,” he says.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, guys! I had a ridiculous time finishing this chapter, especially since it's really nothing more than a series of conversations about *~feelings~* over coffee. Anyway, thanks so much for your patience! (And how 'bout that new trailer? Man, I can't wait!)
> 
> Warnings: explicit violence, mind-controlled murder, and (sort of) major character death.


	5. Part Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings and translation in end notes

* * *

 

**PART FIVE**

* * *

 

_April 2014_

* * *

 

 

The museum says that his name is James “Bucky” Buchanan Barnes, born in March of 1917.

 

He stares at the plate-glass photograph of his own face, a century younger and smoother and looking back at him with undimmed eyes. He rolls the name around in his head, tests it quietly on his tongue. It doesn’t sound like it belongs to him.

 

He’s aware of the glances being leveled at him by the other visitors. He’s unkempt, dirty, and attracting unwanted attention. He shouldn’t stay. It’s only a matter of time until his handlers come for him, and the Captain will be looking for him too once he’s healed from his wounds.

 

He leaves the museum and wanders the streets aimlessly. The world is loud and disjointed, and he feels fear -- a fear so intense that he wants to be back with his handlers, where he knows his place and everything has its order. In a few moments of weakness, he almost triggers his communication device to tell them his location, but a niggling voice in the back of his mind dissuades him each time. He needs more information first.

 

He hides. Staying low, he moves constantly, sleeping on park benches and under bridges and stealing food; all the while he collects his information, hoarding it like a squirrel hoards acorns, little bits and pieces buried so deep that he sometimes forgets them. The Captain and his friend are chasing him, but he evades them easily. The weeks become months. He finds shelters instead of benches and remembers what it’s like to sleep on a bed with real blankets and pillows. He trims his hair and steals nicer clothes, and he stops attracting as many wary glances on the street. He hunts down a safehouse and finds it gutted and empty, and it finally occurs to him that his handlers have abandoned him. They aren’t coming.

 

It feels like another loss.

 

There’s money and supplies left behind in the safehouse. He takes it all and leaves. They owe him that much.

 

***

 

_January 2017_

 

“That was the most disappointing New Year’s Eve I’ve had in years,” Romanoff says as she shoves her last bit of luggage into the trunk. She shuts it with an exaggerated snap. “You two can’t hold your liquor.”

 

“Pretty sure I got a headache just watching you drink,” Steve says.

 

“Pitiful.” Barnes, watching idly from the porch, is almost startled when her attention snaps abruptly over to him. “I expected better of a fellow child of the Motherland, Barnes.”

 

"пошел на хуй, я ирландский.” The party last night had been good. Of course the alcohol had done nothing for him, but the normalcy of it had been . . . charming. He’d even worn one of the stupid paper hats that Steve had foisted on him for a whole five minutes.

 

Romanoff’s smile contains a smidgen of approval, or something like it. “I’ll bring whiskey next time.” She opens the driver’s seat and tosses her purse and coat inside before digging for her keys. “I’ll come around again soon, boys. Give me a call if you need some company.”

 

Steve reaches out for another hug that she tolerates with good grace. “Love you, Nat,” he murmurs. “Drive safe.”

 

“I love you too,” she says, and Barnes sees the flash of surprise cross Steve’s face before he gives her a final, wholehearted squeeze and lets her go. “Take care, Steve. You too, Barnes.”

 

He offers her a cautious wave and watches as she presses Steve’s hand before climbing into the Jeep. The engine roars, and Steve steps out of the way. They watch it until it turns the bend in the driveway.

 

“It’s hard to see her go,” Steve says, hands thrust in his pockets. It plain enough to see that he’d have liked to be driving away with her.

 

“She’ll be back.” Barnes has no doubt that Wilson and Romanoff will keep them supplied with visitors if they accept Stark’s offer, though they may not have as many if they move every few weeks. It’s something to consider. Would the isolation prove to be too much? Barnes knows he doesn’t make for the best company himself. A world of two is an awfully small world for someone like Steve.

 

Steve goes back inside, but Barnes takes his time dawdling around the yard. It’s clear and cold and crisp, a snow-covered start to 2017. _2017_. Jesus fuck, he’s old. The whole planet is old.

 

He wanders along the drive and decides to check the shed. No signs of Chuck. He’s vaguely disappointed as he latches the shed door -- he’d saved up a generous hunk of the salmon they’d eaten last night for that fat bastard. Just as well. If they’re going to have to leave, the cat will have to learn to get her sixth dinner of the day somewhere else anyway.

 

The thought of leaving is still new and raw, but he’s mostly talked himself around to it. Revenge has proven to be a short-lived pleasure, and spending the rest of the his life staying two steps ahead of Hydra sounds more tedious than anything else. If he was still alone, maybe hunting them down would have more appeal, but settling has made him soft, lazy, and he has too much to lose now. For the first time in a while, he doesn’t particularly want to die. So they’ll have to move soon, whether they like it or not. Romanoff’s logic is sound in that regard.

 

Barnes kicks idly at a snowdrift as he mounts the porch steps and makes a note to shovel the walk again before it ices over. He’ll have to get things ready, start making sure that all their loose ends are tied up. It would probably be a good idea to get in some time at a gun range; he hasn’t fired a shot in months and he can’t have a rusty trigger finger if they’re going on the run again, especially since his metal arm is on the fritz.

 

Once he gets inside and shakes the snow off his boots, he’s struck by how silent the house is. The last few days, there’s been a near-constant wall of sound -- not noise, no, Romanoff has too much dignity for that, but certainly activity. The absence of it is jarring. He focuses unconsciously to pinpoint Steve and winds up in front of Steve’s bedroom door. It’s closed. Steve almost never shuts his bedroom door.

 

 _Leave him alone_ , he thinks. He knocks anyway.

 

There’s a slight hesitation. “Come in, Buck.”

 

He cracks open the door and finds Steve sitting on the edge of his bed, electrodes with thin, snaking wires stuck to his naked chest.

 

“It’s okay,” Steve says hastily. “It’s just something that Nat brought.” He holds up a palm-sized device with a touchscreen. “It’s a medical scanner. Can’t remember the technical name for it, but it’s supposed to measure the electrical output in my . . . in the heart.” He picks up a pamphlet on the mattress next to him and thumbs it open. “I’m not sure I’m doing it right. I can’t seem to get it to work like Nat did.”

 

Barnes releases a breath and tells himself to relax. Romanoff wouldn’t plant something that would hurt Steve. Nevertheless, he takes the device when Steve offers it and gives it a thorough examination. The smooth white shell on the back is engraved with the logo of StarkMedTech.

 

“I don’t think the electrodes are in the right place,” Steve says, picking at one of them with his thumbnail. He pulls it off and frowns down at it. “Here, look at the diagram. Does this look like the same area?”

 

Between the two of them, they manage to line the pads up correctly and calibrate the scanner. “You say it measures your heart?” Barnes asks.

 

“The electrical signals. It measures that and my pulse and rhythm and puts the data into a spreadsheet so I can compare. Sam and Nat can see it too.” He swipes the screen and it beeps and hums. “Seems they want to keep a closer eye on me. Natasha said that if I’m going to lie about how I’m doing, they’ll look at the proof and judge for themselves.” He has the sense to look a little shamefaced. Good.

 

“I told her about the oxygen,” Barnes admits.

 

Steve doesn’t look thrilled, but he doesn’t seem angry either. “I figured. I guess if it keeps them from worrying so much, it’s worth it.”

 

“It’s a good idea,” Barnes says. He kneels down in front of Steve and watches, fascinated, as the scanner flashes a series of tiny lights, feeding data from the electrodes. “I’m glad she brought this with her.”

 

Steve chuckles. “Really? I didn’t think you’d want me to use it.”

 

“Because Stark’s company made it? He made you a heart, didn’t he? It’s in there and there’s fuck-all either one of us can do about it now. Might as well be able to scan it.”

 

Steve’s hand flattens over his chest, an instinctive, defensive gesture. “I guess I forget about it sometimes myself.”

 

 _I thought I was the crazy one._ How can any of them forget about it when the reminders are constant and unrelenting? No one can mistake the whirring, clicking gears and the bubble of filters for the natural flesh-and-blood beat of a human heart. Steve’s own body sure as hell hasn’t forgotten about it -- for the past seven months it’s done nothing but fight, pitting its serum-enhanced strength against the intrusion of wire and pipe and fucking up Steve’s blood pressure. It fights and break down and regroups, again and again, and Barnes lives in goddamn terror of the day the serum _wins_. . . .  

 

“I shouldn’t have lied,” Steve muses. “I know I shouldn’t have. It just seems like a waste to send a bunch of cans when I shouldn’t need the oxygen soon. A few more weeks, tops.”

 

Barnes decides to sidestep that minefield for now. The machine trills, and the results pop on the screen, a meaningless jumble of numbers and percentages. It takes them a few minutes to sort through the user’s guide -- the instructions seem oddly unpolished, like they were rushed through along with the product. No doubt they were. Steve’s heart, after all, is hardly better than a prototype, a brand-new invention of StarkTech’s medical division. At the time, the risk was reasonable.

 

Doesn’t make the results any easier to swallow, though.

 

“Here,” Steve says. “Blood pressure, pulse, and electrical output look about the same as yesterday’s reading with Nat, and they’re all good.”

 

“Your filtering level is lower.”

 

“Still within the safe range.” Steve saves the results in the log, uploads them, and shuts down the machine. “Thanks, Buck. To be honest, I didn’t really want to do this by myself.”

 

Barnes frowns at him. “You could’ve asked.”

 

“I’ve never been very good at asking.” He disconnects the wires from the scanner and tucks the device carefully back into its discreet bag. “I suppose it won’t be useful until I’ve done it for a while.”

 

“You gonna use it every day?”

 

Steve nods, resigned. “They went to the trouble of getting it for me. I figure the least I can do is use it.”

 

“It’s the burden of being part robot,” Barnes says.

 

Steve laughs, loud and surprised. He’s still smiling as they start on the electrodes, but Barnes is feeling more subdued. He can’t stop looking at Steve’s chest and trying to picture the mass of plastic and titanium and wire underneath. It’s an ugly thought, but none of them had had a choice. In that moment, it was let Stark implant his machine or let Steve die. Even then it had been close -- he’d barely survived the surgery itself.

 

“What do you want for dinner, Buck?” Steve starts pulling at the electrodes one-by-one, disconnecting the wires from the pads carefully and placing them back in their carrying case. “I can heat up the falafel if you want. You seemed to like it. Or we can finish up the ham and bean soup if you’re hungry for that.”

 

There’s one wire left in the center of Steve’s chest. Barnes finds himself reaching up, gently loosening the adhesive pad and slowly peeling it off. The skin underneath is completely unmarked, just a little pink from the pressure. His own knock-off serum is a lot like Steve’s in many ways, but his scars don’t disappear. Appropriate, somehow. He rubs at the tender spot with the meat of his thumb. Steve goes quiet.

 

There’s a mild buzzing in Barnes’s ears. Carefully, he flattens his palm, and he can feel the vibration of Stark’s machine under soft, warm skin. His other hand rises, cupping Steve’s side, curling along his ribs. He feels Steve startle, and before he can think about it, he sags forward and rests his forehead against Steve’s chest.

 

Steve touches his hair, worried and gentle. “Hey, you okay?”

 

His heart is pounding. He slides his hand away from Steve’s breastbone and presses his mouth there instead.

 

Steve’s whole body jerks. The hand on his hair moves to his shoulder, pushing back firmly.

 

Barnes backs off immediately, confusion and hurt quickly boiling into alarm. Fuck. _Fuck_. “I’m sorry.”

 

Steve blinks at him with wide eyes, one hand still hovering over his breast.

 

“Sorry.” He feels sick. “Shit. Sorry.”

 

Something shifts in Steve’s face. His upraised hand stretches out and grabs hold of Barnes’s arm. “Hey. Hey, Buck, it’s okay.”

 

He realizes that he’s all but wheezing, shaking like a wet dog, and he lets Steve steer him to sit down on the mattress. It takes him a minute to get his breath back, and Steve even goes to get him a glass of water. Jesus Christ, it’s humiliating.

 

“I won’t do it again, I swear,” he blurts. He refuses the water. If he takes it, he has the feeling it’ll end up on the wall. “I didn’t mean to.”

 

“It’s alright,” Steve says, but he looks too bewildered to be properly casual. “Warm body, it happens.”

 

Hell, Barnes is confused too. He only knows for certain that he wanted to, that he still _wants_. There’s a throb of longing in his gut, tingling along with his lips. It’s another piece abruptly slotting itself home in his brain, like rediscovering the tang of marinara sauce or the softness of a plain cotton shirt against bare skin. It feels familiar. It feels right. “I don’t understand. We weren’t --- we never ----”

 

“No,” Steve says carefully. “We weren’t like that. I can’t speak for you, but if you. . . . felt anything, you never breathed a word of it to me.”

 

Is he lying? Why would he? Barnes wants to cover his face, but he has precious little pride left already. No sense in using it all up in one go. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”

 

Steve smiles a little. “That’s a tough thing for a fella's ego to hear, Buck.” He releases his loose grip on Barnes’s arm. “I’m not mad at you. You just surprised me, that’s all.”

 

Steve’s offering him the perfect out, the chance to stop the wretched conversation there, but numbskull that he is, he’s doesn’t take it. “I trust you, and I . . . I don’t know. Sometimes I just want ---” He makes a fruitless gesture between them, trying to communicate the idea of closeness, of bridging a gap that he’s not sure they can ever bridge entirely.

 

Steve is quiet, watching him intently and waiting, but Barnes doesn’t have a clue how to finish his thought or express an idea he doesn’t fully understand himself. “I just . . . trust you,” he says finally. “That’s it, I guess.”

 

“Okay,” Steve says hesitantly.

 

“Okay?”

 

“I mean, we’ve both been through the ringer, so maybe. . . Can I have a while to think about this, Buck? I’m not upset, I swear to God. I just think we’d both better think about it a bit first.”

 

It’s like listening to another language sometimes. “Think about what?”

 

The distant sound of a car door slamming right outside the house startles them both. Swearing a blue streak, Barnes dives for the closest gun under the bed-frame and scrambles to cock it. If Hydra was _this_ close, surely Romanoff would have said so?

 

“Get down,” Steve orders, pulling him insistently to the floor. He yanks the bedside lamp off the table and hefts it up like a club, and they crawl silently around the bed until the mattress is between them and the door.

 

The front door opens and heels click rapidly down the hallway. Steve grabs the barrel of Barnes’s gun. “It’s Nat!”

 

Romanoff bursts through the bedroom door a second later with Glock in hand. She takes one look at them, huddled behind the bed, and barks, “I called you five times. _Keep your phone with you_.”

 

Steve gets up in a rush, still clutching the lamp. “What is it?”

 

She doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at his bare chest. Something’s wrong. “Pack up and get in the car. They know where you are and they’ll be on their way. Move.”

 

It takes all of ten minutes for them to cram their lives into duffels and plastic bags -- a soldier’s habits are hard to break. Romanoff keeps watch at the door, texting furiously between sweeps, feet planted and tense.

 

They leave the house in silence, and Barnes doesn’t look back.

 

***

 

Romanoff is focused and unresponsive until they reach in Gillette proper. She pulls into the parking lot of the post office and kills the engine. “Barnes, there’s a package in your mailbox. Go and get it as quickly as you can. Steve, are you good to drive? Good, come switch places with me and put on your hat and glasses.”

 

It’s empty inside the building, and Barnes makes a beeline for the nearest clerk, who perks up at the sight of a customer. “Another package for you, Mr. Rushman?”

 

He manages a stilted smile for her. “Just one for today, Ramona.” He passes over his ID and receives a non-descript box about the size of a laptop computer. It’s from one of Carter’s dropboxes. “Thanks.” He hopes that whoever’s coming doesn’t pay a visit to the post office too. _Take care, kid_.

 

Barnes gets in the backseat and hands the box up to Romanoff, who immediately rips into it with a knife concealed in her bra-strap. Steve starts the car and pulls out of the lot. “Where to?”

 

“Next state over. There’s an airport in Rapid City two hours east. Just follow the GPS.” She removes a thick packet of paper from the box and flips it open.

 

“What is it?” Steve asks.

 

“The last puzzle piece.” Romanoff tucks the box under the seat and spreads the papers across her lap. “Sharon was able to acquire these from a source who wasn’t too keen to share. They’re the unredacted Project Zipline reports.”

 

Barnes catches Steve’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Okay, I’ll bite,” he says. “So what is Project Zipline?”

 

“Long version or short?”

 

“Let’s start with the short,” Steve replies, a tad impatiently.

 

“In 1951, Dr. Heinrich Zemo was commissioned by Hydra to do research and development in mind control techniques. The Russians had developed their own mind-wiping technology by this time, and apparently the Germans wanted to stay competitive. It wasn’t standard behavioral modification or psychological manipulation, though. Zemo was obsessed with the idea of imprinting a complete spectrum of emotions, thoughts, and memories directly from one brain to another using the electrical signals of the brain -- essentially the transfer of one consciousness into another, permanently.”

 

Steve glances away from the road long enough to give Romanoff an incredulous look. “Is that possible?”

 

“What happens to the other brain -- the person who the signals are being transmitted to?” Barnes asks.

 

“They’re overwritten, presumably.”

 

Steve looks appalled. “So they, what, erase the other person? If they can replace memories and thoughts, and, Jesus, even _personality,_ what’s left?”

 

“Not much, if anything. That’s why Zemo favored this method. He claimed that it would essentially serve as a means to preserve a valuable brain by moving it from body to body. You’re dying? Transfer your brain to a new, younger body. You could keep up the cycle forever, theoretically.”

 

“His son,” Steve says suddenly. “Buck, his son was the first test subject.”

 

Barnes tugs his sleeve down over the prickling gooseflesh on his arm. “I guess that’s one way to continue your family tree.”

 

“But his son died,” Steve protests. “The reports said that Helmut had a heart attack during the trial. The results were inconclusive.”

 

“The tests didn’t end there,” Romanoff says flatly. “In 1957, Zemo attracted a patron who helped fund his research: Arnim Zola.” She selects a single paper from the stack and passes it back to Barnes. There, clear as day, is Zola’s tidy signature and fingerprints.

 

“Shit.”

 

“Shit,” Romanoff agrees. “Steve, pull over, you’re going to run us off the road.”

 

“It worked,” Steve grits out. “It must have worked. That must be how Zola was put into those tapes. That sort of technology . . . .”

 

“That’s what Sharon and I thought too. If Zemo was able to transplant electrical signals from body to body, why not take the frail human out of the equation and transfer straight to a machine?”

 

“Zemo’s file didn’t have a date of death,” Steve murmurs. His hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Our Zemo _is_ Zemo. His brain, at least.”

 

Romanoff looks grimly satisfied. “That was my assumption. At the moment, we have no way of confirming it, but if Zipline succeeded well enough to keep Zola alive, there’s no reason why Zemo wouldn’t preserve his own consciousness as well. The body he has now is probably no relation -- a junior agent, maybe -- and that’s why we couldn’t find records for him.”

 

“Either that, or he was some poor sucker who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Barnes should know. He’s practically made a career of it.

 

Romanoff gives him an acknowledging nod. “In any case, we’ve been chasing the wrong leads. I think it’s more efficient to drop the identity string all together and go forward assuming that Dr. Zemo is alive and currently inhabiting that body.”

 

“Fair enough,” Steve sighs. He sounds about as tired and off-balance as Barnes feels. “You want to explain why we’re heading for the airport?”

 

Romanoff, astoundingly, looks a little awkward. “I knew we had a Hydra tracker tapping into one of our communication lines. I let them stay so I could feed false data and keep tabs on them, but I . . . neglected to tell Sharon not to use that line for anything sensitive. She contacted me to tell me that the documents would be arriving today, and the shipping information was included. They saw the address and they know what Sharon sent. It was a rookie mistake.”

 

“No hard feelings,” Steve says simply. He puts the car into gear and pulls back onto the highway. “Do they know that Joe Rushman is Bucky?”

 

“If they don’t yet, they will. They’re not complete imbeciles. As soon as Sharon told me what the documents were and that Hydra knew she’d stolen them, I knew someone would be sent to retrieve them, and that would lead them straight to you two. I hope you weren’t too attached to that house, because it’s probably going to be burned to the ground.”

 

Barnes spares a brief second to be grateful that the damn cat wasn’t in the shed after all. “Where are we going?”

 

“You’ll be taking a flight straight to Kansas City to meet up with Sam and Wanda. Under different circumstances, I wouldn’t suggest it, but in this situation there may be safety in numbers. They can get you to a new safehouse.”

 

There’s an odd note in Romanoff’s voice. “Or?” Barnes guesses.

 

“Or you can come with me to Leipzig.”

 

“I’m coming with you,” Steve says instantly.

 

 _No shit_. “Why Leipzig?” The place doesn’t exactly have positive associations for any of them.

 

Romanoff shuffles the papers on her lap. “The last time we were there, we were operating under the assumption that Zemo was a new player. If he’s been a figurehead in Hydra for over a hundred years, his hometown might give us a new trail to follow.” She pauses. “I’m going back to the bunker. Normally I would tell you both to go into immediate hiding, but I might need your help with this.”

 

It’s what Barnes expected her to say, but it still sends a chill through his bones. He flexes his hand uneasily and sees Steve looking at him in the mirror again. _Once more unto the breach_. He nods, and Steve nods back.

 

“We’ll go with you,” Steve says.

 

***

 

He’s never been in so much pain. Not even the Chair hurt this badly.

 

Barnes curls in, huffing, and tries to lift himself. He can taste blood in his mouth and feel it pooling in his nose. His severed arm burns like white-hot fire -- he loses a few minutes gaping at the empty socket, cut wires still sparking dully. Behind him, Rogers and Stark are fighting. He hears the whine of the arc reactor and the metallic ring of Rogers’s shield. They’re screaming at each other. He needs to _move_.

 

“He killed them, damn you!” Stark shouts. Barnes chokes on a breath, barely able to turn his head far enough to spit a glob of blood and mucus onto the concrete floor. “He’s a murderer!”

 

Rogers makes an incoherent noise. A body hits the wall once and then twice, and the floor shakes. The two of them pass through Barnes’s peripheral vision just as Rogers slams the shield in an uppercut to Stark’s head.

 

Stark goes in one direction and his faceplate goes another, skittering back into the corner. In a split second, Rogers is on him. For one shining, awful moment, Barnes can see him clearly -- he has the shield in his hand, raised over his head, and there’s blind fury, _betrayal_ , straining at his eyes, in the corners of his bleeding mouth. But Stark makes a pained sound, and Rogers hesitates. The shield wavers in his hand.

 

There’s a piercing, mechanical whine, and a blue light blinds Barnes. His head spins and he almost vomits -- he tips his head back and breathes through his nose, blinking through lines of blurry color. For one moment, he’s afraid his hearing has blown out, it’s so dead quiet, and then he hears the unmistakable sound of a body falling.

 

“Oh God,” Stark says.

 

 _Oh no._ **_No_** _._

 

Barnes shoves himself up on his remaining arm, desperate to see. Rogers isn’t on top of Stark anymore. He’s on the floor next to his shield. Smoke is wafting up in curling wisps from the gory crater in his chest.

 

Stark’s face is a frozen rictus of shock. He sways on his knees, clutching his cracked arc reactor. “Oh God,” he says. “Oh God.”

 

Barnes rolls onto his stomach and starts to crawl. He drags himself with one arm, fingers scrabbling and skidding against the wet floor. Rogers isn’t moving. _I’m coming. I’m coming, I’m here_. _Hang on, pal_. Behind him, someone’s trying to break through the sealed blast-doors. Distantly, Barnes can hear metal collapsing on metal, a terrible grinding, cracking sound -- like a soup can crumpling --  but he doesn’t bother looking. He keeps crawling until his hand is fumbling against Rogers’s scalded chest, trying to pull the broken skin together. Rogers’s eyes are blown wide, fixed up on the ceiling. His pulse is thin, reedy.

 

_No. No, no, no, not again, no._

 

Rogers’s earpiece is in, undamaged. Barnes rips it out, and he’s shaking so bad he almost doesn’t get it in his ear.

 

Wilson. Wilson will help.

 

“Cap, do you read?” Wilson’s voice breaks through in a cloud of static. “Steve, status!”

 

“Help me,” Barnes rasps. “He’s dying.”

 

Rogers’s lips are blue. Somehow Barnes manages to stand, head and stomach lurching; he hauls Rogers up one-handed in a thoughtless panic. He’s as limp as a ragdoll, hanging face-down over Barnes’s good shoulder. _Get him out of here. Get out_. Stark is still kneeling on the floor.  Wilson is shouting, frantic, over the comms. Barnes clutches Rogers’s body close and runs.

 

***

 

The flight to Leipzig is long and tedious. They fly to Minneapolis, from Minneapolis to New York, from New York to Munich, and then from Munich to Leipzig. Romanoff and Steve both doze on and off, and Barnes keeps watch and lets them rest. Romanoff has more than compensated for her earlier carelessness -- her tricks get Barnes through the metal detectors and Steve onto the planes without attracting any dangerous notice, courtesy of one of her digital feature-altering masks.  

 

Barnes keeps his eyes on the other passengers, wary of a possible plant, but as they finally near their destination almost a day later, he turns his attention to the Zipline reports and reads them front to back.

 

There had been forty-two test subjects from 1952-1958, all expiring within a month of transplant if they didn’t die during the procedure. They’d tested them in pairs, and the results had been largely identical -- the donor’s body shut down instantly after transferal, while the receiver lingered up to a week in immense physical pain and burgeoning mental psychosis. As the years had gone on, the number of voluntary subjects had dwindled, and the scientists had turned to taking people they knew wouldn’t missed to fill the gaps. It hadn’t been until June of 1958 that they’d finally gotten a viable trial with the transfer of a prisoner-of-war’s consciousness into the body of a patient kidnapped from a local asylum. After a series of rigorous tests, the asylum patient’s personality, memories, and thought processes were declared to be identical to those of the soldier. Funding poured in from all corners, and the trials continued, hitting a major snag in 1966 -- it was discovered that although the bodies that received the transplant were functional, the re-routed neurological pathways inevitably started to degrade after an average of five years, producing dementia-like symptoms and rendering it necessary to transfer the “brain” again to preserve it. Zemo had written a letter of appeal protesting that the tactical benefits of his program outweighed its inconveniences, but the method fell out of favor with the European leadership, and the project was largely buried.

 

It’s strange that Barnes finds it almost comforting. The mind wipes were torture, but there had always been something of _himself_ left afterwards, some tiny splinter of Bucky Barnes that Hydra’s machines hadn’t been able to touch. Hell, it actually could have been worse. They could have decided that the regular wipes were too much trouble and implemented a more permanent solution. He could have had his mind pushed right out of his head, replaced by someone else’s, and there would have been no chance at all of getting himself back. He could have easily turned out like the poor bastard whose hide Zemo is currently wearing.

 

He almost laughs out loud, but Steve’s sleeping peacefully beside him. Life is fucking funny sometimes.

 

***

 

Following the unpaved road to the bunker makes for a short journey. The arrogance is breathtaking: a central Hydra command center, barely a mile out of the city limits. Yet under the innocent facade of a water treatment facility, it had been a bustling, undetected hub of activity for nearly sixty years.

 

“We don’t have much time,” Romanoff tells them as they get out of the rental car and cross the dried-up runoff bed. “If there’s anything valuable here, they’re going to think to secure it. The faster we get in and out, the better.”

 

There’s no need to break into the back entrance.  The scorch marks from Stark’s repulsor blasts are still there, black stains against the concrete. The open foyer stretches in front of them, floor-length ventilation windows spilling in early-morning sunlight. The signs of the battle are still there too: narrow dents from Steve’s shield and more repulsor marks. Romanoff leads the way, gun drawn. Barnes takes up the rear, and they pick their way across the chamber toward the bay doors. They’re broken, blown off their hinges months ago by a frantic burst of Maximoff’s power. Romanoff’s steady tread falters as they close in, and Barnes follows her gaze to the rust-colored spatter on the floor. Christ.

 

“Keep moving,” Steve says softly. Romanoff starts walking again, and if Barnes sticks closer to Steve’s back as they climb over the wreckage of the doors, no one’ll comment on it.

 

The facility looks as though it hasn’t been touched since their last visit. If nothing else, Barnes had expected Stark to send some lackeys to clean it up for the public, but it’s a wreck. If it was difficult to go into the foyer, it’s a thousand times worse to set foot back into the lab. The cryogenic tank is destroyed, the chair reduced to bent rebar and tattered strips of leather. He vividly remembers tearing at it in a rage, sending glass and metal spraying over the walls. The computer terminals are dark, wide screens smashed in.

 

“Anything look different to you, Buck?” Steve asks. He sounds like he’s unsettled and trying to hide it.

 

“Nothing.” From the corner of his eye, he sees Romanoff lean over to inspect the terminal keyboard. “Don’t touch it. The last Hydra system I came across had a shock trap.”

 

“It almost electrocuted him,” Steve confirms, and Romanoff dutifully takes a step back.

 

“There’s no dust on the keyboard,” she says.

 

Barnes comes over to take a gander. Sure enough, there’s a thick layer of gray dust over the table, but the keys are comparatively spotless. “Someone’s used it.”

 

“And then destroyed it?”

 

“No, that was me,” Steve says, a bit sheepishly.

 

Barnes circles around the side of the desk toward the back, looking for the cables, when the stench of putrid meat punches up into his nostrils. “There’s something dead in here.”

 

Romanoff looks up, sharp. “ _Something_ as in a rat, or a body?”

 

“Too strong to be a rat.” He inhales like a bloodhound, breathing past the sickly-sweet musk of decay, and tries to pinpoint the source. There’s nothing under or behind the desk, and it gets stronger the closer he gets to the brick. “I think it’s in the wall.”

 

Steve joins him and flinches as soon as he’s level with Barnes. “Something’s definitely rotting.”

 

Steve spots the uneven mortar between the bricks, and it takes less than five minutes between the three of them to carve out a hole. Behind the brick, there’s a short passage, and at the end of it, Barnes can see the dull glint of a mesh grating. The smell is almost overpowering. Before either one of them can move forward, Romanoff slips between them and shimmies through the hole.

 

“Nat!” Steve hisses.

 

“Hush,” she says. There’s a minute or two of rustling, the screech of rusty metal, and finally the clatter of the grate falling down. Romanoff’s flashlight clicks on, and there’s a long pause.

 

Steve crouches down by the hole. “Nat? You okay?”

 

“You need to see this,” is all she says.

 

Of course Steve barrels right in, and Barnes barely gets into the passage before Steve steps over the fallen grate and vanishes out of Barnes’s eye-line. _Dammit_. Barnes rushes to follow, and when he emerges from the wall, he finds himself in a large, well-lit room lined with more computer terminals, security cameras, loose cables, and circuit boards. A steel door, its massive bolts drawn, is on the opposite wall. Steve and Romanoff are standing by the largest terminal. There’s a body on the floor in front of it.

 

Romanoff glances up at him as he approaches. “Now we know why we couldn’t seem to catch up to Zemo,” she says dryly.

 

Barnes crouches down to inspect the corpse. It isn’t a pretty sight. There’s not much left apart from bones and a few stubborn sinews, but the uniform, the size of the skeleton, and the strands of reddish-brown hair are familiar. Barnes looks -- there’s a gold ring with a square emerald on the smallest finger of his right hand. He recognizes that ring. It had felt ice-cold against his cheek when Dr. Zemo had grabbed his face. “It’s him.”

 

“It looks like he’s been dead a while,” Steve observes.

 

“Four or five months.”

 

Romanoff taps her flashlight against her hip. “Then I’d like to know who we’ve been chasing all this time.”

 

Barnes stares down at Zemo, studying his hollow eye sockets and rigid pose, the gape of his empty jaws. He’d died suddenly. No signs of trauma. It’s a real pity that he’d gotten an easy death. _See you in hell_. He gets to his feet, dusts off his palms, and calmly crushes the hand with the ring under his boot.

 

Steve frowns a little at the snapping bones but doesn’t say a word. Romanoff is sniffing around the computer; suddenly she reaches out and flicks the monitor on. It sputters and hums, and the screen slowly brightens.

 

“Nat.”

 

“It didn’t kill me,” she says. “And you’ve got no room to talk.”

 

Steve sighs. “I don’t suppose you have one of your decryptors on you.”

 

“Do I look like an amateur?”

 

“Here, let me do it,” Barnes says. “At least a shock won’t kill me. Don’t look at me like that either, Steve. We need to get into this.”

 

Romanoff plucks the drive from her boot and hands it over. “Just don’t plug your finger in the socket.”

 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He takes the decryptor carefully into his metal hand, wary of breaking it, but his grip seems to be behaving. As the screen’s pixelation resolves itself, the outline of an open file becomes visible.

 

“Upload history,” Romanoff reads. She comes closer but keeps a measured distance from the controls. “It must have frozen on the last program Zemo had open when he died.” She whips out her phone and takes a few snaps of the screen. “Here’s the last date and location: September 29, 2016, downloaded to coordinates 59.4039° north, 135.8844° west.”

 

“Isn’t that up north? Near Alaska, I think.”

 

Romanoff types for a second. “Klukwan, Alaska.”

 

It seems to occur to all three of them at the same instant, and they all back away from the terminal. Romanoff’s eyebrows are nearly up to her bangs.  “Steve, when did you and Barnes take out that Hydra power plant in Klukwan?”

 

“Around the same time.” Barnes says. He takes Steve’s elbow and tugs him back a few more steps before crouching down to look underneath the paneling -- there’s an open mass of naked wires inside, next to something that looks like a massive port of some kind. “Romanoff, do you know anyone who could neutralize this? We need to see what Zemo uploaded.”

 

Romanoff answers, but Barnes doesn’t hear a word of it. His left arm starts to hum loudly, the panels whirring and fanning out in rapid, spastic waves. He clenches his hand to stop it, but the plates don’t respond. _What the hell_ \----

 

“Bucky?”

 

His hand jerks forward, right into the tangle of wires.

 

“Bucky, what are you doing?” Steve says, his voice rising in alarm.

 

“Barnes, stop!”

 

His hand plunges through the mass of wires and grips them like a vise, three fingers digging into the open port. He grabs his own wrist and struggles to pry it off, but the wires spark, and he’s consumed with agonizing pain. Steve and Romanoff are shouting at him. Blue bolts arch up and down his arm, and somehow he manages to grit out, “Can’t. Help ----”

 

The bolts leap from his arm over the keyboard, up over the monitor, dancing across the panels, and the screen flares, and the lightning keeps coming, a flashing chain connecting his hand to the hard-drive.  The image on the screen disappears in a blur before fading to empty blue. Speakers crackle with static.

 

“My compliments, Sergeant Barnes,” the computer says in precise, Swiss-accented English, and Barnes’s throat closes in mindless panic. He’d know that voice anywhere. “You have been a most accommodating host.”

 

Behind him, Steve lets out a breathless cry of anger, and Barnes plants his feet against the paneling, yanking until his muscles groan. If he has to pull his arm out of its own damn socket, he’ll do it to get that fucking hunk of metal off, get _him_ out of his _body_ \---

 

“I would not advise that, Sergeant,” Arnim Zola says, sounding faintly amused. “You will get nowhere. And it would be wise to remain where you are, Captain Rogers. You too, Miss Romanova.” The screen pulses with light again, and thin bolts creep across the walls and the ceilings, sneaking tendrils connecting and overlapping until the entire room is covered in a net of flickering, electric webbing. “Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

 

“We’re not staying,” Steve grits out. He’s on his toes, ready to lunge forward, and Barnes silently wills him not to. _Stay away_.

 

“I think you will change your mind, Captain. I hesitate to confess it, but it has been a trifle dull of late. That arm is a beautiful creation -- one of my finest -- but its circuits are . . . limiting. Many months have been wasted with inactivity, and I do not intend to squander my time any longer. I ---”

 

“Before you kill us,” Romanoff interrupts, “can you satisfy my curiosity on one point? Call it professional pride.”

 

There’s a brief, whirring pause. “I am at your disposal, madam.”

 

“This body here, was this Dr. Heinrich Zemo of the Zipline Project, or was it just an operative with delusions of grandeur?”

 

The screen flickers. “He was a fool to link his past to his present. Reinvention is necessary for survival. I believe you understand that.”

 

“The older I get, the less necessary it seems,” Romanoff replies. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to indulge me a bit more? Our last conversation was cut short.”

 

This time there’s a certain sourness in Zola’s modulated voice. “Indulge you in what regard?”

 

“I’m very interested in this project of yours. I don’t get out much on Friday nights, you see, and I like secrets. Were you the one who figured out how to transfer human consciousness from human to machine, or was that Zemo as well?”

 

There’s a long delay in the computer’s response again. “I prefer the efficiency of technology,” Zola says. “Bodies are weak. They constrain and limit. They die.”

 

Barnes pulls on his arm, changes his stance, and pulls again. Nothing. The sparks are still traveling in a near-solid line from his metal fingers to the console. _Is it feeding into me or am I feeding into it?_ He tries to slip his other hand into the console, hiding the movement under his thigh, but as soon as he touches the panel, a powerful shock makes him recoil. Steve sees it and steps forward with a jerk that seems almost involuntary.

 

“Don’t,” Barnes barks.

 

“Sound advice,” Zola says.

 

“If you don’t want him to touch it, how about you let him go?” Steve’s right hand is clenching and unclenching, like he’s missing the weight of his shield.

 

Romanoff shuffles forward enough to attract the attention of the pivoting camera above the monitor. “I don’t suppose you have Zemo tucked up in those circuits somewhere as well? I’d like to speak with him too, pick his brain a bit.”

 

“Zemo had no delicacy, no creativity,” Zola says. “He had brilliant ideas and wasted them. A body is disposable. A great mind is not. His mind was not destined for greatness.”

 

Another surge of energy rolls through the arm, and Barnes sags against the floor, biting back a moan. Sweat’s prickling on his scalp, scalding heat growing at the joint of his shoulder. He looks at Steve, and their eyes lock.

 

“Zemo seemed clever enough to throw us for a loop,” Steve says abruptly.

 

The camera swivels, and the console’s innards shudder. “If you believe that, you have not done your research as thoroughly as Miss Romanova.”

 

Romanoff’s eyes widen for just an instant before she taps her toe casually against Zemo’s corpse. “So how long were you in this body, Doctor? A few months? It must have been after our last meeting. We thought you were gone.”

 

Barnes digs his hip into the floor and tries flexing his fingers in the port, but no amount of concentration can make them budge. It’s like the arm doesn’t belong to him. He reaches in with his other hand again and receives another shock for his trouble. The webbing on the wall flickers, though, like a dying lightbulb, before it brightens again. There’s a lag; Barnes feels it somehow, a tug in his arm that’s coming from the monitor. The pull is less intense, weaker. Leaving the computer, leaving his arm -- it weakens Zola. He can’t keep everything up at once.

 

“You believe that Hydra would destroy so valuable a mind to kill you? You flatter yourself.”

 

“I suppose I do. Was Zemo supposed to get you a new body? A new computer? Did he trick you, go back on his word?”

 

The speakers emit a sharp, wheezing crackle. “A laughable concept, Miss Romanova. _I_ chose my new body.”

 

“One that Zemo was already occupying?”

 

“It was the nearest serviceable physical form.”

 

“You stole his body and erased him.”

 

“He was afraid of me. Small minds are always afraid of what they cannot understand.”

 

There’s a sudden blur of motion as Steve throws up his hand and fires Romanoff’s gun at the console -- three even shots, right into the central overhead cable. The cord breaks in a spray of sparks and smoke. The monitor goes dark, and the electric forcefield vanishes. Steve and Romanoff run forward toward Barnes, but he tries to wave them back -- his arm is still humming. Zola’s still there. “Go! Get out of here!”

 

“Steve,” Romanoff says urgently.

 

“I’m not leaving,” Steve grunts. He crouches down and cinches his arms around Barnes’s waist, pulling and heaving until the sinews in Barnes’s shoulder scream in protest.

 

 _Mule-headed son-of-a-bitch_. “There isn’t time -- get out now, and come back for me later.” Steve’s face is hard and set; there’ll be no reasoning with him. Barnes switches his tactics. “Romanoff, please!”

 

It happens too quickly for any of them to respond. A bolt of electricity comes racing up Barnes’s arm, leaping from the metal plates and plunging straight into the center of Steve’s chest. Barnes stares at Steve’s face, inches away from his own, and watches helplessly as shock and agony contort it. Romanoff cries out. The arms around Barnes’s waist slacken, and Steve slumps back onto the floor, the bolt still crackling over his heart.

 

“Stop!” Barnes howls. “Stop it, stop!”

 

The lightning vanishes and the monitor flares back to life. “Such a waste of technology,” Zola says coolly.

 

Romanoff has gathered Steve into her lap -- she’s doing frantic chest compressions, breathing into his mouth, but he’s so still. His face is colorless. _His heart_ , Barnes thinks numbly. His heart stopped. He’s gone.

 

Through the ringing in his ears, he hears Zola talking to him. “I would prefer to do this with your cooperation. It need not be difficult. Hydra would be willing to forgive.”

 

With blurry eyes, he gazes down at his arm, at the wires and cables, and thinks of his notebooks, of Steve, of Rebecca. It’s over. “I’d tell you to go to hell, but I don’t think your circuit-boards have a soul.”

 

Zola’s screen pulses, sending another shudder through the cables. “We are both more machine than man, Sergeant. But I am the world’s database, its hard-drive, its future. You are nothing more than a conduit.”

 

Barnes turns again to look at Steve, lying motionless in Romanoff’s arms, and hopes that if the universe has any mercy to spare at all, they’ll end up in the same place. _Catch you later, pal_. When Romanoff makes it out, she’ll see that they’re buried proper. He lifts his head and faces Zola, staring up into the center camera. “A conduit that you need, jackass.” With one heave, he springboards his feet into the floor and lunges up with one last wind to slam his flesh hand against the sparking forcefield.

 

The pain is so great that he doesn’t feel a thing. He can see the electricity arching over his bare skin to his other arm. He can see the moment that the pressure builds past its threshold and the metal begins to smoke and twist and rupture. He sees the look of horror on Romanoff’s face. He sees Steve, blue-lipped and peaceful. He hears Zola screaming. But he feels nothing.

 

 _I love you_ , he thinks, and he holds on tight as he burns.

 

* * *

* * *

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: explicit violence and description of a corpse, presumed character death, Zola being a dicklord, and gratuitous angst.
> 
> Google!Russian translation: "Fuck you, I'm Irish."


	6. Part Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings below.

* * *

* * *

 

**PART SIX**

* * *

_January 2017_

* * *

 

 

He comes back to consciousness slowly.

 

The first thing he’s aware of is a vague, unfamiliar presence beside him in the form of measured breathing, subtle cologne, and the rustle of paper. The second thing that occurs to him is that he fucking _hurts._

 

“Welcome back, Sarge,” a low, dry voice says.

 

He blinks away the grit in his eyes and tries to look over. His neck and shoulder holler at him, so he stops, grunting with the pain. He can feel cool sheets and a pillow underneath him. Brightly-lit machinery comes into focus around him, wires and tubes connected to his body, and he panics.

 

“Calm down,” the voice commands. “You’re fine.”

 

 _The fuck I am._ He forces himself to turn his head. His head lurches against his skull, and he can taste blood. He looks over to the left side of the bed.

 

Nicholas Fury’s looking back at him.

 

He swallows with difficulty, his throat scratchy and sore. “This hell?”

 

“The hospital. About the same thing, as far as I’m concerned.”

 

It doesn’t make any sense. If it’s a clone or a robot or a hallucination or something, it’s sure convincing. His head is throbbing. “I killed you.”

 

“Yeah, you did, and no thanks for that.” Director Fury has a book propped in his lap, and he’s holding a cup of coffee. He’s wearing dark sunglasses indoors. Nothing makes sense.

 

“Sorry,” Barnes says.

 

Director Fury turns a page, indifferent. “Tell me that when your brains aren’t fried and then we’ll chat.”

 

 _Steve_ , he thinks, and he passes out.

 

***

 

The second time Barnes wakes up, he wishes he hadn’t.

 

He isn’t in hell. He can feel his heart beating. He can smell the familiar odor of antiseptic and bleach, and the cool sheets bunched in his hands feel real enough. He pries his eyes open, and the room is undoubtedly a hospital -- there’s a tray of bandages and medications by his left side. There’s water too, in a bottle on the tray, and he’s suddenly aware that his throat is a dry as sandpaper. He tries to roll forward to reach out for it, only to realize that his left arm is missing.

 

He stares at the gaping socket. There’s nothing left but the metal cap attached to his shoulder. No wires, no panels, no framework. Nothing. It’s gone.

 

Steve’s gone. The realization hits him right in the gut, and he slumps back against the pillow. Of course he lived, he thinks numbly. Of course he did -- he’s like a fucking cockroach. Steve’s dead and Barnes is alive, and it’s a punishment that he always knew he deserved and hoped to God he would never get.

 

There are footsteps in the hall. The door opposite his bed opens, and Romanoff peers around the frame and then comes inside. “Hey. Nick said you were coming around. How’s the pain? Are you thirsty? Hungry?”

 

If he begged her, he wonders if she would be willing to kill him. She might. She’s a pragmatic woman at heart.

 

She doesn’t appear to be too bothered by his silence either. She strolls around his bed, checking the machine’s readings with a practiced eye and rearranging his wires and tubes. “Can you sit up? If you can, I can wheel you over to see Steve later.”

 

He flinches, oddly wounded by the fact that she would screw that knife deeper. He swallows a few times and rasps, “No funeral yet?”

 

She looks at him strangely and then seems to understand. “He’s not dead, Barnes.”

 

He saw Steve fall over -- he saw the bolts that stopped his heart. “How?”

 

“My Widow’s Bite,” she says simply. “Good for electrocuting idiots and serving as shock paddles in a pinch. His heart just needed a little jump-start to get it running again. He’s fine now, just tired and lazy.”

 

A part of him doesn’t want to believe it. If it’s a lie . . . . “Can I see him?”

 

“In a minute, if you want,” she says. “He’s sleeping, but he’d appreciate seeing you awake. Settle down first. You’re not exactly a spry old man right now either, and I’ll only take you if you promise not to do anything stupid.”

 

Barnes’s eyes burn with a rush of hot tears. He clenches his jaw and struggles against them, not wanting Romanoff of all people to see him cry, but the relief is overwhelming. His whole body aches with it. They’re both alive. He’s not alone.

 

“You’re lucky,” she observes. “Not all of us are fortunate enough to have a lightning rod attached to our bodies. You had second-degree burns, but they healed up within twenty-four hours. The arm took the brunt of it.”

 

Involuntarily, his eyes are drawn back to the bewildering bare socket. “It’s gone.”

 

She looks at him with something like sympathy. “It was completely destroyed. Tony offered to fly in and try to salvage it again, but I thought we should leave it up you. If you want a replacement, we can get you one.”

 

He doesn’t know how to feel. He’s unbalanced, the missing limb a yawning emptiness. It was his arm, for god’s sake -- its absence is shocking. But . . . well, in some ways, it wasn’t his arm, was it? Zola had put it there, forced it on him, welded his body to a weapon, and now he had proof that its circuits were corruptible. It had never wholly been his. “How long was Zola in there?”

 

In one smooth motion, Romanoff puts the water bottle in easy reach on his right side and sits on the mattress beside him. She watches him snag the water and guzzle it in one shot. “As best we can figure, he must have transferred himself via the terminal in the bunker from Zemo’s body to the outpost in Alaska at least five months ago -- maybe more. When you and Steve broke into the outpost ----”

 

“I got shocked,” he interrupts.

 

She nods. “Nick and I think that might have been when the transferral took place. Zola probably saw an opportunity and took it. Unless, of course, you plugged yourself in somewhere else.” She leans back on her hands, thoughtful. “We don’t know much about the arm. Do you have any idea what his endgame might have been?”

 

 _Hell if I know._ “Can’t say. They didn’t want me to know how to neutralize it.”

 

“Hmm. I suppose we won’t know until we hunt him down. I took care of the terminal in the bunker, but I don’t doubt that he slipped away.” She cocks her head to the side, studying him with new interest. “At least you didn’t let him kill anyone with that arm.”

 

“Wasn’t me.”

 

“We’ll agree to disagree. But give yourself a little credit, Barnes.”

 

He has nothing to say to that. He fiddles with the empty bottle -- it’s too much to process right now. He’ll figure it out later. “Where are we?”

 

“Magdeburg. This place is run by a friend of Nick’s,” she says. “The whole facility’s off-the-books, so we’re safe here.”

 

He contemplates asking how the hell Fury is still alive, but he quickly decides that he doesn’t care all that much about that either. There are vastly more important matters at hand. “I want to see Steve now.”

 

She offers him a half-smile. “Show me you can sit up, and I’ll get a wheelchair and sneak you past the nurse.”

 

He gets to the edge of the bed with surprisingly little difficulty. His muscles strain a bit, and he feels unbalanced, but he doesn’t hurt anymore. He stays there, propped up on one hand, while Romanoff goes to fetch the wheelchair from the hall. The hospital gown slips down on his left shoulder, and he peels it back to study the bright pink splotches across his neck and chest. They look bad, but they’re already starting to fade.

 

“It’ll be a short trip,” Romanoff says as she brings in the chair. “Steve’s just down the hall. They’ve got him hooked up 24/7 to monitor his vitals, but they want him to stay another week.”

 

“How long have we been here?”

 

“About four days.” She maneuvers the chair into place and sets the brakes. “Sam’s on his way right now, and Wanda will join us when she can.”

 

“When will he come?” The thought of Wilson’s calm, easy presence is unexpectedly welcome. He’d feel safer having Wilson nearby, even though Romanoff has proven plenty capable herself. Maximoff will be a valuable addition as well. Barnes is too vulnerable right now to be of much good -- he needs all the backup he can get.

 

“ETA is tomorrow morning. He’s pissed at all of us, so prepare yourself for that.”

 

“I think I can handle it.” He lets Romanoff help him off the bed and into the chair. She doesn’t so much as blink at his buck-naked ass, but it takes them a few minutes to get him arranged on the seat comfortably. Romanoff tucks a blanket over his lap in an oddly prim gesture before pushing him out the door and down the hall.

 

The lone nurse out at the desk gives them a dubious look as they pass by, but Romanoff wheels them right past without pause, stride long and swift and chin lifted in perfect, indifferent confidence. The nurse doesn’t say a word.

 

“Works every time,” Romanoff says smugly as they round the corner. “It’s all in the walk.”

 

“Thanks for the tip.”

 

She smirks.

 

Steve’s room is on two doors down from Barnes’s, and Romanoff pushes on through without so much as a knock. Inside, Steve’s curled up on the bed, sheets bunched up at the foot of it. He’s sleeping -- his face is calm and unlined. He’s wearing sweats and a tanktop instead of a gown, and his bare feet are dangling over the side of the bed.

 

Romanoff stops just inside the door. “Wake up, Gramps,” she says loudly. “You’ve got a visitor.”

 

Steve startles, but he sits up easily, blinking and pushing his mussed bangs aside. His eyes fix on Barnes, and he lights up brighter than a marquee sign. “Bucky!”

 

“Stay put, Rogers,” Romanoff commands. “You’ll tear out your leads again. I’ll bring him over.” She steers Barnes over to the side of the bed and locks his chair in place with a perfunctory snap.

 

Steve immediately leans over as far as the wires connected to his chest will let him go. “How are you feeling? Are you okay?” His eyes are searching Barnes’s face, wide and blue and alive even behind the fog of sleep. Barnes sags forward like a puppet with cut strings, butting his head up against Steve’s shoulder, and just breathes. Steve’s hands cup the back of his neck, a soft, reassuring anchor.

 

“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” Romanoff says quietly. Her light footsteps disappear into the hall.

 

They’re silent for a good long while. Steve feels warm and solid and steady, and he looks and sounds and smells like himself. Barnes twists his hand into Steve’s shirt. He’s half-afraid to let go. “I thought you were dead,” he manages.

 

“I’m not,” Steve swears, and then he chuckles ruefully. “We seem to have this conversation an awful lot, Buck.”

 

He huffs a laugh and reluctantly lifts his head, propping himself up unsteadily on his elbow. Steve looks mussed and tired, but he doesn’t appear to be in any pain.  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

 

“I’m fine. But your arm, Buck -- I’m so sorry.”

 

Barnes heads him off. “It’s better that it’s off. It wasn’t mine to begin with.”

 

Steve skates one hand down Barnes’s shoulder and then pauses a few inches away from the socket, giving Barnes a questioning look. He nods, and Steve gently lifts the sleeve away. His touch is probing but careful, skimming over the knotted scar tissue with no hesitation. “Does it hurt?”

 

“No,” he says truthfully. “I should have told you about it. I knew something was wrong, and I should have told you. He might have made me kill you.”

 

“You should have told me, but you didn’t know, Buck. It’s not your fault.”

 

He shakes his head vehemently. “I put us both in danger, all because I was too proud to have you thinking that my walnut is cracked even more than it already is.”

 

Steve takes a deep breath. “What’s done is done. We’ll find you a better one when you’re ready for it.” He removes his fingers and tucks the sleeve back into place, but as his arm withdraws, Barnes reaches over and catches it wordlessly.

 

Steve’s warm hand fits comfortably in his, and Barnes grips it as tight as he can.

 

***

 

True to Romanoff’s prediction, Wilson is incensed.

 

Barnes wakes up the early hours of the morning to the sound of the man giving Steve and Romanoff an earful from all the way down the hall. Through the wall, he hears bits and pieces -- _half-cocked plans_ and _I trusted you_ and _we talked about this, Nat, goddammit_ and _pull your head out of your ass,_ mixed in with noises of acute frustration and the occasional wet sound of a nose being blown.

 

Eventually the raised voices quiet down, and after the dust has settled, Wilson pops into Barnes’s room. His eyes are red-rimmed and he looks exhausted, but he offers Barnes a warm smile. “Hey, man.”

 

“Hey.”

 

“That was a real stupid-ass thing you just did.”

 

“I know.”

 

“You feeling better?”

 

“Much better.”

 

“Alright.” Wilson leans against the doorway and sighs. “I’m hungry and I’m tired and I don’t want to look at Natasha for at least five hours, so I’m going to find a place to crash. I’ll be back this afternoon.”

 

Barnes returns his half-hearted wave and watches him go until he’s out of sight. As soon as the coast is clear, he hoists himself out of bed and hunts down his wheelchair. The nurse isn’t due to check in on him for another hour, so he’s got time. He manages to get in the chair without tripping all over himself -- his balance is still fucked to hell and back.

 

He wheels himself down the hall one-handed and stops outside Steve’s door. Steve must have heard him coming, because the door opens as he’s about to knock.

 

“What are you doing up?” Barnes demands before he can think better of it.

 

Steve just gives him an unhappy look, clutching the lead pole with its fluid drip-bag and portable monitor.

 

“Sorry.” Barnes gives him a quick once-over. He looks about as drained and upset as Wilson -- maybe even more so. Christ. “Rough morning?”

 

“You heard.”

 

“Most of it, yeah.”

 

Steve sighs, busying his hands with adjusting his tubes and wires. “He has a right to be mad at me. I made a promise and I broke it. I can’t----” He breaks off, his face crumpling, and turns away, bracing his back up against the wall.

 

Alarm is rapidly superseding Barnes’s amusement. “What’s wrong?”

 

Steve shakes his head, his mouth set in a mulish line. “Nothing.”

 

“Steve.”

 

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

“Fine. I’ll let you alone.” His challenge is met with uncharacteristic silence, and Barnes realizes with a sinking feeling that Steve isn’t going to protest. Time to regroup. He backs the chair out of the doorway and into the hall to give him some space, and Steve shuts the door with a firm snap. Barnes sits there for a minute, gaping at the door like a chump.

 

By the time Wilson comes back later that afternoon, Barnes has whipped himself up into a real good brood. Wilson strolls in as Barnes is finishing up his dinner, looking more rested and relaxed but still a bit jumpy.  “Hey, man. How’s the food treating you?”

 

“S’okay.”

 

Wilson leans against the wall and crosses his arms, watching Barnes carve up the hunk of vaguely meatloaf-flavored protein with his fork. “Got an update on the Hydra tails who were after you.”

 

He stops chewing. “They get to the house?”

 

“Sorry to say they did. They trashed it completely on the inside and even pulled down some of the beams and walls. They must have thought you were hiding. It’ll probably be easier to demolish it than try to resell.”

 

Barnes frowns down at his meatloaf. He _liked_ that house. A part of him had been hoping, nonsensically, that they might come back to it someday, a few years down the road.

 

“So that’s the bad news. The good news is that Wanda followed them,” Wilson says, sounding satisfied. “She and Vision staked the place out and got them as they were leaving. One casualty, but ten others were taken without too much trouble. They’re sitting in the Raft for now -- Hill and Sharon are going to talk to them. Wanda called a few minutes ago to say she’s sticking around to make sure they stay put.”

 

Good kid. “She alright?”

 

“She’s fine. Sounds like she had a lot of fun rounding them up.” He shifts against the wall, jamming his hands in his pockets. “I heard about your arm, man. Sorry that had to happen to you.”

 

He shrugs.

 

“Think of it this way: whatever Zola was up to in there, you didn’t let him do it.”

 

He shrugs again.

 

Wilson frowns. “Okay. I’ll bite. What’s up with you? You guys have a fight?”

 

Barnes scowls at him. “None of your business.”

 

The look Wilson gives him speaks volumes. “If you can stop being a cranky old bastard for five seconds-----”

 

“I’d rather hear what the hell you said to Steve.”

 

They glare at each other until Wilson sighs and drops down heavily into the chair by the bed, elbows propped on his knees. “Look, I didn’t say anything that didn’t need saying. He can’t keep doing this.”

 

“It’s his choice.”

 

“I know it is. I get it. But denial is a powerful thing, and he’s been living in it for six months.” Wilson catches his eye and holds it, earnest and resigned. “You know that, I know it. . . . And you know what? Deep down, he does too.”

       

***

 

Barnes’s sleep is interrupted for the second night in a row, but this time it’s not by the dulcet sounds of an argument -- this time it’s merely a well-honed awareness of another presence in the room that has him snapping back to consciousness. He’s wide-awake in an instant, wary, but when he rolls over, it’s to find Steve in the doorway.

 

He sits up, instantly on alert. Has the facility been compromised?

 

Steve is twisting the hem of his tank in his one hand, and the other is sheepishly cupping the back of his neck. He looks awkward, embarrassed. “Buck, can I---?”

 

Barnes relaxes. They’re safe. “C’mon.” He scoots over on the bed, and Steve quickly crosses the room and climbs in. They shuffle around a bit, resettling, and Barnes even lets him have half of the pillow. He can never stay mad at Steve for long. He has the feeling that he never could.

 

“You took your monitors off,” Barnes observes, but he’s feeling too reconciliatory to make a fuss about it right now.

 

“Just for a few minutes,” Steve says. He turns onto his side and slots himself up against Barnes’s side; the warmth is nice, though it’s closer quarters than he’s used to. Barnes waits, but Steve keeps inching nearer, like he’s trying to burrow in.

 

“Steve?”

 

Steve ducks his head against Barnes’s neck, and his shoulders shake once, twice. Barnes flinches as the first drop of wetness touches his skin, but it still takes him a second to realize what’s happening.

 

Steve’s crying, and Barnes doesn’t know what the fuck to do. All this time, and all the grief that life’s thrown at them in the last year, and he can’t remember a single solitary time that Steve shed so much as a tear in front of him. And now Steve’s hitching breaths are getting louder and louder, turning into sobs.

 

 _Do something, blockhead._ He hooks his arm over Steve’s shoulders, and Steve immediately moves into it. His jaw is clenched, like he’s trying to hold it back, and Barnes butts his nose up against Steve’s forehead and stays there, skin pressed to skin.

 

“It’s okay,” he says, stupidly. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

 

But it seems to work. Steve’s breathing levels out a bit -- his iron-clad grip on Barnes’s shirt loosens. Full-throated sobs gradually taper off into wet sniffles and snorts. Barnes gropes over on the bedside table for a wad of Kleenex, and Steve blows his nose loudly before curling back next to him.

 

“Sorry,” Steve rasps. He looks shell-shocked, like the enormity of the last few months’ insanity has finally come tumbling down on him.

 

“It’s alright.”

 

Steve tips up his head and kisses him.

 

Barnes’s body clams up for one blank second of sensory overload. It comes to him in confused fragments: the mint-toothpaste coolness of Steve’s breath, the bristly brush of his chin, the wet, tentative heat of his mouth. Steve breaks away, eyes closed and eyelashes damp with tears, and then presses their lips together lightly. At that questioning touch, the stunned suspension breaks and Barnes’s whole body lurches into action -- he grasps the back of Steve’s neck and deepens the kiss.

 

Steve moans and then startles a bit, like he surprised himself. Barnes smothers his noises, sucking at his bottom lip, delving into his mouth, hungry. His heart is pounding like a jackhammer. Steve’s hands fist in his hair, stroking, tugging, and the sudden spike of desire is so strong that Barnes has to ease up. He guides Steve until their foreheads are touching, noses bumping with every movement. They lay there for a while, silent, lips brushing as they breathe in tandem.

 

“Jesus Christ,” Barnes murmurs.

 

Steve looks at him, red-eyed, about as vulnerable as Barnes has ever seen him. “Was that okay?”

 

Barnes’s cock is sitting at a delighted half-chub in his pants. Of course it was _okay_. “Yeah.” He thumbs at one of the salty tracks drying on Steve’s cheek. “Are you?”

 

“Not really, no.” He takes a deep, shaky gulp of air. “My heart is always going to be a liability. Always. I can’t run for long distances. I get tired quick. I’m on oxygen and meds.  I could pass out during reconnaissance and blow everyone’s cover. I could have a heart-attack in the middle of a battle. Natasha didn’t capture Zola because she was busy trying to bring me back, and now he’s miles ahead of us again. I can’t put my team in the position of always worrying about whether or not my heart is going to give out during a fight. It’s a . . . it’s a liability. _I’m_ a liability.”

 

“Steve---”

 

“I’m right back where I started, right back to what I was before: sick. Sick and useless.”

 

“Don’t fucking say that.”

 

Steve swallows, throat bobbing. “I’m not going to get better, am I?”

 

If the damage was truly reparable, Steve’s serum would have taken care of it a few months ago. The fact that the serum keeps stubbornly fighting the implant, damaging the tissue again and again, means that there probably isn’t a solution, barring another transplant with a more compatible device. Barnes doesn’t have to be a surgeon to know that a procedure like that would be a tremendous risk. They almost lost him the first time. On the other hand, no one completely understands the way the serum works either. “I can’t see things getting much better, but that doesn’t mean they can’t. Either way, we’re with you.”

 

Steve’s face twists, pained. “Sam’s right. The Avengers, everything -- it’s over.” He scrubs at his nose with the back of his hand, and the naked grief in his face is almost too much to handle. “They were all I had, Buck. They were the one good thing I had left, and I helped destroy them.”

 

Barnes turns in and sets his cheek against Steve’s hair. What can he say to that? It’s true. “You were trying to save them.”

 

Steve shifts out of Barnes’s grasp and rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling. “I kept telling myself, once I got better, I would fix it. I would make things the way they were before. I would get the team together, patch everything up with Tony. You would be there -- I could have you and them. This would all just be a bad memory.” He wipes his face again. “I thought I could get it all back and lose nothing. I _am_ arrogant.”

 

“Maybe,” Barnes allows. “But whatever you did, you did it to protect them. And me.”

 

They lapse into silence.

 

“What do I do now?” Steve asks finally. His voice is hoarse and small. He doesn’t sound at all like himself.

 

Barnes takes a second to collect his thoughts. It seems like there’s only one answer for them both, one way to go from here, but he honestly can’t picture a life without fighting, without the chase, without that looming, ever-present fear that the past will eventually catch up. It’s beyond imagining. “I can’t tell you that. But the way I see it is you were Steve Rogers before you were Captain America.”

 

“The world doesn’t need Steve Rogers.”

 

His mouth goes dry. He needs to say it. It was all he could think in that bunker, when he was so sure they both were dead. _I should have told you._ “Maybe the world doesn’t, but I never loved Captain America like I loved Steve.”

 

Steve’s chin trembles. “Love you too, Buck,” he murmurs, and his voice breaks. “Always will, no matter what.”

 

It’s the last thing he wants to bring up at this moment, but hell if he’s going to ruin this too by letting it become a problem. “You know that doesn’t mean you have to . . . .” He stops, oddly anxious, and gestures between them.

 

Steve musters up a small smile for him. “The world’s a different place now, Buck. I figure there’s lots of ways to show you love someone.”

 

“How about we see what happens,” Barnes says. He presses a kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth, and his heart gives a leap when Steve accepts it. “You and me, we always land on our feet. We’ll figure this out.”

 

Steve closes his eyes and nods.

 

“You think you can sleep? You can stay here if you want.”

 

“I don’t think I can sleep, Buck, but I’d like to stay.”

 

Barnes gathers up the sheets while Steve fluffs up the pillows. They stretch back out on the bed, curled together like a pair of bookends, and wait for morning.

 

***

 

It’s surprisingly hard to eat one-handed.

 

Barnes looks down at the remains of lunch on his bed-tray and mulls over whether the container of Jell-O is worth the trouble. Hell, no one’s here to see it anyway. He plucks the cup off the tray and rips the top off with his teeth, settling it in the vee of his thighs and digging in. It’s cherry. Strawberry’s better, but he’s ravenous today -- healing always makes him hungry.

 

He might eat Steve’s Jell-O too. It’s the punk’s fault for leaving it there.

 

When he hears the rustle at his door, his first assumption is that it’s Steve, back from his post-lunch walk around the facility with Wilson. He doesn’t bother looking up, rooting around in the cup for the last bite. “Hey, you still hungry? If you’re not, I’ll finish your tray.”

 

“I already had lunch,” Director Fury says.

 

Barnes’s head snaps up. Fury’s leaning against the doorjamb. He’s wearing a black trenchcoat but no sunglasses this time. There are tiny spots of blood on his gray shirt, and he smells like gunsmoke. “I see you’re feeling better.”

 

“What do you want?”

 

Fury raises a scarred eyebrow. “What do you think?”

 

Barnes crumples up the empty cup. “You’d probably like to kill me.”

 

“If I wanted to do that, I’d have done it before you woke up.” He comes inside and sits down on the bedside chair. “Besides, Cap wouldn’t be happy with me if I did.”

 

He doesn’t have the patience for games anymore. Either he’s losing his touch, or he really is getting old. “What is this about?”

 

“You’ve caused us a lot of trouble,” Fury says. He leans back in his chair. “You also have access to a lot of valuable intel.”

 

Barnes studies him narrowly. Fury’s cool, calm, betraying absolutely nothing -- the man’s an expert. “Would you be working on it with Romanoff?”

 

“Naturally. Agent Hill too.”

 

“Then I’ll tell you everything I know.”

 

Fury seems utterly unsurprised. It’s a little irritating. “You talk with me or Widow, and I’ll forget the slugs you put in me. We’ll call it even. Deal?”

 

Barnes takes the hand he offers. Fury’s grip is firm. “Deal.”

 

Quick as you please, Fury’s back on his feet and on his way out the door. He pauses just long enough to give Barnes a nod and parting shot: “I’ll be keeping in contact, Sarge.”

 

***

 

Armed with false IDs and passports, they leave the hospital in the late afternoon. Romanoff loads up the car with a cache of cleverly-hidden weapons and Wilson loads it up with food -- it’s going to be a long car ride, and two of the passengers consume 8,000 calories a day each. He buys them all milkshakes from a fast food restaurant before they leave town.

 

“I’m feeling generous and full of good will towards my fellow man today,” Wilson says, passing a couple frothy cups to Barnes and Steve in the backseat. “It’s not gonna last, so enjoy it.”

 

Romanoff snorts around her straw and pulls out into traffic. “If it doesn’t last, you’ll end up hitchhiking.”

 

“You try it, Blondie.”

 

Barnes alternates his time between napping and keeping a close eye on the surrounding road. He remains vexingly tired, but the burns are nearly healed and he doesn’t trust Romanoff enough to let himself relax entirely. Steve has no such compunctions -- he sleeps through a solid nine hours of the first day. Still, he ends up using Barnes’s good shoulder as a pillow, so Barnes doesn’t mind, even if Romanoff is giving them looks from the rearview mirror.

 

It isn’t until they pull over at a rest stop on the third day of travel that Romanoff makes her move. As they all pile back into the car, she gets in the driver’s seat but doesn’t put the keys in the ignition. She sets them on the dashboard instead and turns around.

 

Wilson sighs. “Okay, what’s up? And please, let’s keep it civil this time.”

 

Romanoff gives him an unimpressed look, but her attention fixes on Steve. “I got a call yesterday. Tony’s made another offer. There’s a top-of-the-line safehouse in Italy that’s ready for you and Barnes right now. You can hide there as long as you need to, and Tony’s going to be working with Nick and I to track Zola down, starting next week. Top priority.”

 

Wilson sucks in a breath through his teeth.

 

To Barnes’s surprise, Steve is quiet. “Tony’s helping you look for Zola?”

 

“None of us are safe with someone like him still out there, especially now that we know he can duplicate and transfer himself at will. We’ve got traces of an energy signature from the bunker terminal, and Tony’s confident that he can isolate it with a little hard work. Let him handle it from here.”

 

“Buck?”

 

Steve’s leaving it up to him, he realizes. “If he knows what he’s doing, let him take the lead on this.” The choice is easier than he would have thought -- he’s wasted enough of his life on Zola, on Hydra. If this whole mess has clarified anything for him, it’s that he wants to stop chasing his past in circles. He’s paid his dues, and now he’s ready to move on. They don’t deserve any more of his time.

 

“You sure, man?” Wilson asks.

 

He catches Steve’s eye. “I’m sure.”

 

“Okay,” Steve says. “Tell Tony I’d be grateful if he did. But we’ll find another place to stay.”

 

Romanoff leans over the cupholder. “Listen to me. Take the house. It’s an olive branch, Steve -- take it, please. If you don’t there may never be another opportunity.”

 

Steve looks torn. Barnes reaches out, subtly, and brushes his back. _Go ahead_. Steve twists around to look at him, asking a wordless question, and Barnes nods. It’s a risk, but this time it’s one he’s willing to take. Things have to be repaired. They might as well start now.

 

“We’ll accept,” Steve says hesitantly. “I’d . . . I’d like to tell Tony myself -- thank him. Would he take a call from me?”

 

There’s a wealth of relief in Romanoff’s eyes. “He will, believe me.” She sends a quick text, and then hands her phone over to Steve. “He’ll call you. We’ll wait.”

 

Steve takes the phone and gets back out of the car, walking a short distance away to the grassy strip by the highway. After about a minute, the phone rings.

 

“Thank God,” Wilson breathes.

 

“Operation Betty and Veronica is a go,” Romanoff murmurs, and Wilson laughs and puts his head in his hands.

 

Barnes watches Steve pace circles in the grass as he talks, his stance slowly going from anxious and defensive to cautious, hopeful. _One day at a time,_ Barnes thinks. He chose to hitch his star to Steve’s years ago, consequences be damned -- when it comes down to it, there’s nothing to do but keep making that same choice, over and over again.

 

 

* * *

EPILOGUE

* * *

  _June 2017_

_Ravello, Italy_

* * *

 

 

The water along the Amalfi coast is a vivid, beautiful blue, lapping up against white sand. It’s temperate enough for early morning swims just off the beach, even before the sun warms it.

 

Bucky floats on his back, sleepy waves carrying him farther away from shore. Paddling one-armed takes a decent effort, so the brisk six-mile swim has left him tuckered out and satisfied, and he lets himself drift lazily. Steve should be up by now (neither one of them have been able to shake their habit of rising before the sun) and is probably fixing breakfast or sketching on the terrace. There’s no rush.

 

Both of them are taking a well-deserved vacation this week. No data hauls, no business talk, no sorting through letters or files or Hydra archives. Sam had promised them that for seven full days, no one would make contact except for regular check-ins. It’s strange, not being involved at all in missions or maneuvers that Sam, Natasha, Wanda, and Vision still run, but they’ve both adjusted to it. Serving as the data center, coordinating the collection and assessment of the information nabbed from Hydra and rebuilding some of SHIELD’s archives, makes Steve feel useful. It’s not the same, of course, but it helps.  It’s convenient for the Avengers too, having one place to send everything and one place to go to for research and briefings.

 

Still, they’re entitled to a break. After all, Stark and Natasha routed another one of Zola’s central storage banks yesterday. It’s not the end of the fight, but it’s a big enough blow for Hydra that Bucky’s inclined to celebrate it if he damn well pleases.

 

He stretches a bit, letting the water around him bob and then settle, and he looks back over at their house, nestled on high ground by the sea. He has to hand it to Stark -- the place is gorgeous, oddly understated for a man of his grandstanding tastes. It’s modestly-sized and made of white-clay brick, with a back garden, a third-floor balcony facing the water, and sturdy wooden trellises snaking up each wall. They have the whole cove to themselves, separated from their neighbors by the rocky jut of the cliff.

 

As he floats closer, he spots Steve sitting on the balcony with his sketchpad, long legs propped up against the railing. Drawing the cliffside, probably. He’s drawn so many landscapes that he could wallpaper the whole house with them.

 

Bucky flips over and strikes back toward the shore. It isn’t always easy, staying confined to the grounds of the villa, but it’s been good for him to have a place to spread some roots. He likes the house. He likes the town, with its complacent, hospitable residents. He likes his freedom. He likes having people to care about. He likes being able to help without having to pick up a weapon (hell, he hasn’t fired a gun in over six months) and he likes having a real sense of security for the first time he can remember. There’s a lot to appreciate here. The seaside is gorgeous, there’s always plenty of food, and he’s _safe_.

 

Plus, Steve is as sweet as a peach in bed.

 

The sand is already getting hot underfoot, and Bucky hurries to collect his sandals and towel. Sometimes he’ll wander the beach or the cliffs a bit before coming back inside to eat, but today he doesn’t feel like it. Straight home it is. Last night, Steve didn’t come back to their room until after Bucky was already asleep -- up late working on a drawing again -- so Bucky has high hopes for this morning. (What can he say? He’s starting to become an optimist.)

 

He ties the towel around his waist and walks up to the house, unconcerned by the possibility of other beachgoers. It’s private property, but the occasion stray vacationer hasn’t posed a problem yet. People’s eyes tend to glance away from his empty sleeve uncomfortably -- if anything, he’s become more invisible now than he ever was before.

 

With all the security locks to undo, it takes a good two minutes to get inside; when Stark said it was a safehouse, he wasn’t kidding. There’s little chance of a break-in anyway. With the Sokovia Accords well on their way to a decent amendment and with the advantage of hiding in plain sight from any officials still keen on hunting them down, Stark’s fortress-like reinforcements are more a bonus than a necessity at this stage.

 

Bucky wanders through the kitchen first to grab some coffee, already waiting for him in the pot, and then stops in the upstairs bathroom to piss and rinse the saltwater off. The bathroom mirror is fogged up from Steve’s shower, and he wipes it off absently before retying the towel an inch or two lower and heading off to the bedroom.

 

Steve’s still on the balcony, head bowed in concentration as he shades in a row of waves with a stick of soft charcoal. His hair’s damp, sticking to his nape, and the blond roots are starting to show -- they’ll have to dye it again soon. He twists around as Bucky steps out into the sun. “Morning, Buck. How was your swim?”

 

“Good. I made it an extra mile today.” He leans against the railing, posing, showing off a bit. The towel’s so loose on his hips that it’s about ready to slip right off.

 

Steve raises his eyebrows. “I can see that.” He turns right back to his sketch. He can be a damned tease when he’s in the mood.

 

 _So that’s how we’re gonna play it._ He struts over to look at the paper, getting up in Steve’s space, crowding against his back and hooking his chin on Steve’s shoulder. “That’s a nice one.”

 

“You say that about everything I draw.” He’s smiling, though, blue eyes all crinkled up.

 

“Nah. This one’s really good. Excellent use of . . . pencil, and stuff.”

 

Steve laughs and puts his notepad down on the tiny coffee table. “Geez.”

 

“What, you got a problem with a compliment?”

 

“Compliments ain’t compliments if there are expectations attached.”

 

“Have some pity, pal,” he wheedles. “I got real lonely last night.”

 

“You were snoring like a chainsaw. You didn’t move when I got in.”

 

Bucky noses behind his ear, under his jaw. Fuck, he smells so good. “The ocean’s still gonna be here in an hour. It’s not going anywhere.” He bites Steve’s earlobe, gives it a proper tug, and he feels Steve shiver. “Come inside for a little while, huh?”

 

“Well, with an offer like that . . . .” Steve murmurs.

 

Their bedroom is airy and open, comfortably messy, with a wide wall of gleaming windows and a panic room within easy reach. It’s Bucky’s favorite room in the whole house -- he can’t deny that it gives him a certain satisfaction to know that Stark has no idea what they’re getting up to inside it. His own bedroom, just across the hall, hasn’t been slept in for two months. He’s not planning on going back anytime soon either.

 

He and Steve tussle playfully as they take a leisurely route to the bed. The covers are already turned down neatly, pillows fluffed. Bucky would laugh if his mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied -- Steve was obviously expecting to get a piece of something this morning.

 

He nips Steve’s chin, full of sudden fondness, and drops his discarded shirt on the floor. “Hey, tie up my hair so I can give you a suckjob, would you?”

 

“Geez,” Steve says again, his cheeks reddening. But he gathers Bucky’s hair into a knot with well-practiced movements and fastens it with a rubber band, giving Bucky’s face an affectionate pat when he finishes. When he drops to his knees, it’s so abrupt that Bucky almost jumps. He steadies himself on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve shoots a grin up at him before yanking off his towel.

 

“Shit.” It isn’t exactly what Bucky had planned, but he’s fully on board with this development. He grips Steve’s shoulder harder as his dick is surrounded by hot, teasing suction.  Steve’s mouth is a _dream_ , and it has him achingly hard and breathless in no time at all.

 

After a few minutes, he can’t take it -- he skims his hand under Steve’s chin, gently guiding his head in a faster rhythm. Steve retaliates by sucking harder, lips a firm seal, his throat tight and slick. Fuck. He’s not going to last long at this rate. “Hold on,” he pleads, groaning when Steve immediately pulls off.

 

“What is it?” Steve asks, slightly hoarse. His lips are red and swollen and Bucky’s cock twitches.

 

“C’mon, let me do my part too.” He helps Steve up and then smacks his ass. “On the bed, Rogers.”

 

Steve glares at him, but he gets on the mattress eagerly enough, stripping off his pants and underwear in one casual motion. His body’s beautiful, spread out and waiting, and Bucky takes a moment to enjoy the whole picture before joining him.

 

He stretches out upside down, head level with Steve’s hips, and Steve immediately hands him a pillow -- no one ever said he was slow on the uptake. Bucky wedges the pillow under his stump for support and makes himself comfortable. He feels Steve press a line of kisses up his thigh, and he turns his attention to the dick waving in front of his face, flushed and already wet at the tip.

 

Bucky can’t resist. “Hey, there,” he says, and he grins at Steve’s answering snort. He rubs the point of Steve’s hipbone and then steadies his cock and dives straight down to the root. Steve yelps.

 

It takes a few minutes to find a good rhythm even now, but when they do, it’s heaven. Steve’s body moves in perfect counterpoint, and Bucky does his best to pull as many shivers and sighs from him as he can. He can lose time like this, mouth satisfyingly full and his cock encased in tight heat, but for once the blankness isn’t unsettling. It’s nothing but good, nothing but pleasure and the comfort of familiar, trusted touch. He’d be hard-pressed to find anything he likes better than this.

 

The thing is, they can’t stay out the world forever. He knows it -- their time here has a limit. One way or another, they’ll have to go back. He doesn’t know what will happen, but for now he’s plenty happy to take it as it is. He and Steve have been a hundred different things to each other,  friends and brothers and lovers, and a century later, who can say where they’ll end up. Maybe it’s strange, the two of them, but it’s inevitable too; it’s one last piece slotting into place, a shadow of a memory, or a feeling, that somehow survived in Bucky’s fractured head. God’s honest truth, he can’t say whether he always loved Steve like this, and he’ll probably never be able to.

 

But it’s okay. There are some things he just doesn’t have to remember.

 

Steve’s doing something utterly unfair with his tongue, shoving him straight toward the finish line. _Not today, pal_. He sneaks his hand between Steve’s legs, gleeful when he feels Steve falter and his flat stomach shake. He teases, enjoying himself thoroughly as Steve grows more frantic. He sucks mercilessly and slips one finger down even further. _Bingo_. Steve’s hips quiver and he comes, shuddering all over and moaning low in his throat. Bitter salt coats Bucky’s tongue, and the sounds Steve’s making and the vibrations against his dick are enough to have him popping off too.

 

The wash of pleasure leaves him wrung out and far too pleased with himself. He cleans Steve up through the aftershocks and then reluctantly slips out of Steve’s mouth. The shock of cool air is annoying, but he flops bonelessly across Steve’s warm stomach and relaxes. They lay quietly for a while, letting their breathing slow and their sweat dry.

 

“Mmmm,” Steve hums. He stretches with a yawn, toes wriggling, and settles back down into the pillows. He starts to stroke Bucky’s back in broad, idle sweeps. “That was nice.”

 

“You feeling alright?”

 

“Mmhmm. Chest’s not tight at all today. It felt wonderful.” He smooths a few stray strands of Bucky’s hair away from his neck. “Thanks.” He always says thank you afterwards. It’s funny.

 

Bucky smiles into the mattress. “I hope you weren’t planning on finishing that drawing right away, ‘cause I’m sort of inclined to take a nap right here.”

 

“Fine by me, Buck. I’ve got no plans.”

 

He closes his eyes, Steve’s hands still stroking his skin, and lets himself drift. He has the sun on his back, Steve sated and happy underneath him, and no orders to follow.

 

It’s a good day.

 

* * *

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Angst, loss of a limb, and explicit oral sex. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading -- I so appreciate your lovely comments, kudos, and interest! I hope you all thoroughly enjoy CACW, as I know I will. (Only one more month!)


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